The Farthest One from Home
by Sabari
Summary: Bumblebee tells Raf about his initial experiences on Earth.
1. Prologue

**_Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day. It is potentially slightly AU, but not on purpose. It was originally a four chapter flashback in another story I wrote titled 'The Serpent's Song', but it has here been expanded into a full stand-alone story._** _ **I wrote this for my entertainment (and partially in response to a request for it), and I am publishing it here for yours. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.**_

* * *

It was a sunny, flawless day at the beginning of summer.

School had finally let out, the Decepticons had been quiet for weeks, and Rafael and Bumblebee had taken full advantage of this by going on long, meandering drives, playing video games or just hanging out together. Sometimes they simply sat in companionable silence and watched the world go on around them, other times Raf would tell Bumblebee about Earth, the things he thought and felt and experienced. Other times, Bumblebee would consent to tell a story of a particular battle he'd fought in.

It was Raf's opinion that Bumblebee was an engaging storyteller, and many exciting things had happened in his life. While he was young for an Autobot, he was many decades older than Raf, though Raf had never managed to pin down exactly how many. In any case, his life had often been rather action-packed, and there seemed to be no end to the stories he could tell about missions carried out for the Autobots.

Yet there were times when he would wax silent, sometimes for minutes or hours. At those times, he would speak only with prompting, though always he seemed to have heard anything Raf said to him. It wasn't as if his mind wandered, so much as his spirit grew quiet. Raf always guessed that some dark memory or other was at the root of it, but -rather unlike Arcee- Bumblebee seldom shared tales with unhappy endings. And he never spoke of his time in the clutches of Megatron.

Always Bumblebee was willing to engage in some activity intended by Raf to distract him, but it was ever apparent that his spark just wasn't really in it during these off times.

On this warm, seemingly perfect day, Bumblebee fell into one of these moods. He and Raf had been taking a drive across the desert. Raf had been talking to Bumblebee at length about certain members of his family, when he suddenly sensed a change in the Autobot Scout. He knew Bumblebee was still listening, for he was always listening. But he also knew that the Scout's spark was elsewhere just now, turning to some inner or historic darkness which troubled him.

Raf remembered his previous attempts to distract Bumblebee had not gone well. Bee had gone along with the distraction easily enough, but it hadn't seemed to genuinely distract him. Perhaps, Raf thought, it might be better not to "change the subject" as it were, and instead ask what was bothering Bee, or what it was that had arrested his memory.

He suspected that just asking straight out would probably result in Bumblebee's trying to dismiss it, to say he wasn't thinking about anything. The Scout might even try to provide a distraction _for Raf_. Raf suspected it wasn't that he didn't want to share, so much as the fact that he didn't believe anyone would want to hear any of his stories that didn't end happily, or at least successfully.

Bumblebee was considerate that way, trying not to make other people feel bad. But it was also personal. Because of his handicap, Bumblebee tended to go to extreme lengths to make sure no one thought of him as lesser or pitied him. Sometimes he felt sorry for himself, just like everyone does, but he didn't want anyone _else_ to feel sorry for him. Not ever.

Thus, Raf was uncertain how to approach it. If the problem had been his own, he would have had no difficulty. Bumblebee was always willing to listen, without judgment or opinion. This was something Raf had initially not fully believed, but Bumblebee had gently prompted him when he was reluctant to talk about something for fear of ridicule or simply being ignored, and had expressed a genuine interest in whatever he said. If asked, Bumblebee often did have insights of his own, but he seemed to understand the value of simply being heard by another, without having to worry about what that other might think of you, or worrying that they might offer some unwanted advice.

But, while he knew silence had its place, Raf knew also from experience that saying nothing would not lead Bumblebee to eventually open up about what bothered him. Bee took silence as encouragement to say nothing. They were strange, these moods of his, for they were unlike his typical attitude, yet they were as much a part of him as his wheels or fenders.

Today, on some impulse or insight, Raf hit upon an idea.

"Bumblebee," he said, and waited for an acknowledgment.

 _{Yes?}_ Bumblebee burred softly, when it was apparent a response was being waited for.

"You've been on Earth a long time, right?" Raf continued.

 _{By some definitions, I suppose I have,}_ Bumblebee replied.

"What was it like?" Raf asked, "First coming here, I mean. It must have been scary, to leave your home on Cybertron to come here, to Earth."

 _{Yes,}_ Bumblebee conceded quietly, adding after a moment's pause, _{It was.}_

Something in the tone of Bumblebee's response told Raf that he'd hit on the right thing. But he wasn't sure if he'd prompted Bumblebee enough. He knew, because it was a similarity they shared, that if he pushed too hard for answers, Bumblebee would shutdown or evade the questions. But if he didn't nudge quite hard enough, Bumblebee would not tell him this story, around which Raf was now quite certain these odd moods revolved.

For a long number of seconds, they continued to drive on in silence. The scenery swept by, the starkly beautiful red desert stretched away seemingly to infinity, though Raf knew that was only an illusion. Even the desert, enormous as it seemed to him, had an end that could be reached. Beyond were the million wonders of the Earth, more than Raf would ever live long enough to see and experience.

Hard to believe this was only one inhabited planet floating in space. Somewhere out there was Cybertron, dead now, but once -not to long ago, cosmically speaking- very much alive. And surely these two could not be the only such planets. Surely there were others.

The enormity of the universe was staggering to contemplate. It was a subject in school that Raf had paid attention to, but it seemed like nobody in his class -not even the teacher- really had a feeling for the true size of the thing they were discussing. Talk about the universe typically centered on just a few nearby planets, and especially on the ones known to most directly affect Earth itself. The Earth was the center around which all discussion revolved, as if the Earth were the center of the universe itself. But nobody knew that was true, or even knew enough to theorize convincingly that it was.

But even though nobody seemed to have the remotest grasp of the size of the universe, what little they seemed interested in was enough to overwhelm and confuse them. Raf didn't really have a conscious awareness of his depth of understanding of the universe, and wouldn't have believed it had anyone pointed it out to him because of the limitations of his own experience. But it was true nonetheless that he perceived and understood on a different level from most humans.

With no explanation, no excuse or apparent reason for it, he understood Bumblebee when no other human did. He personally counted this as less significant than the fact that Bumblebee understood _him_. Even though he spoke English, almost nobody around Raf seemed ever to understand or even hear him much of the time. Bumblebee did, without fail, every time. To Raf, this was nothing short of miraculous. The rest of it he simply accepted without question.

Finally, Bumblebee spoke again.

 _{I knew Cybertron was dying,}_ Bumblebee began slowly, the buzz in his voice wavering a bit more than usual, _{I think everyone felt it, they just didn't realize it at the time.}_

Sensing that anything he said right now might derail the story, Raf said nothing.

 _{I didn't know Optimus Prime well back then. Not personally. But he knew me. And he realized that the war would not end with the death of Cybertron, and that the time had come to prepare a place for us to go when we eventually had to leave. I didn't understand, then, why he would choose me, other than because I was a Scout in his army. Truth be told, I didn't really care either. Not then...}_


	2. Chapter 1

**Part 1 – From a Dying World**

" _I dig 'til my shovel tells a secret; swear to the Earth that I will keep it. Brush off the dirt, and let my change of heart occur."  
_ _ **-Earth**_ **(Sleeping at Last)**

* * *

The Scout was tired.

He was tired of traveling long distances in short periods of time, a courier of scant information delivered from one stranger to another. He was tired of spending nights in camps full of Autobots whose faces and names he did not know, would never know, and dared not care about because they might all be dead tomorrow. He was tired of running from fights because the intel he carried was too precious to risk losing. He was tired of watching soldiers fall and cities burn. He was tired of seeing everyone he met as a possible traitor, as someone he could not trust with anything, because trust was how the enemy got you. You let your guard down for a second, let something slip, let someone in, and then that person you trusted turned out to be a traitor, or -perhaps worse- they were killed for information they never should have had.

But, most of all, he was tired of watching his planet crumble around him, looking on helplessly as it was slowly but inexorably destroyed bit by bit by the very ones battling for control over it. Cybertron was dying, and nobody seemed to be noticing. Nobody seemed to care. The world had gone mad, and nobody cared that it was imploding around them as the streets ran with the spilled energon of the fallen.

Not a week ago, he had gone into a POW camp, too late to save too many. They were dead, and the one who wasn't, she was broken, shattered, lost. Her partner had been murdered right in front of her, and The Scout hadn't been fast enough to stop it. He'd been too busy sulking, pitying himself. If he'd gotten there faster, the one who'd died might have lived. That one's name he knew, because the survivor had more than once cried out, calling for him, the one with whom she had shared that closest bond.

Tailgate.

That was his name. And he was dead. All because Bumblebee and Cliffjumper -Scout and Warrior respectively- hadn't moved fast enough. And Bumblebee hadn't even managed to take out the one who'd done it. The murderer had scuttled off into the shadows unscathed, and that made him angrier than anything, because he'd heard the pain in the survivor's voice.

 _Her_ name was Arcee, and she would never be the same.

Bumblebee could do nothing for her now. In fact, he knew it wasn't at all likely that he would ever see her or Cliffjumper again. That's how it worked when you were a Scout. The job was to get into places you weren't wanted, to learn things you weren't meant to know, to take things that didn't belong to you, and then to report back to your superiors. You didn't have a regular team when you were a Scout like Bumblebee, you couldn't afford the risk of exposure. Scouts worked alone, off the grid, and often only their commanding officers knew what they were doing. The worst part was being asked to spy on your own people. It wasn't in the nature of Autobots to be deceptive, but the fact that the Decepticons infiltrated their ranks, posed as Autobots or managed to blackmail them into working for the other side necessitated soldiers with skills like Bumblebee to remain impartial, to observe, to spot and eliminate traitors before they could harm the Autobot cause.

It was dangerous to trust anyone. As an Autobot, Bumblebee found that harder to take than anything else. Autobots were trusting by nature. They were honest and open. But Bumblebee could not be those things. This was war, and sacrifices had to be made. To protect and serve the Autobots to the best of his ability, Bumblebee had to give up some of the things that made him an Autobot.

The worst of it was how easy, how terribly easy, it had been to become this distrustful, vindictive being, and how hard it was to remember why this was how it had to be. The duality of silence being required, and also being his enemy was a difficult burden to bear, and Bumblebee was tired of carrying that weight of responsibility. It was too hard to maintain two separate personalities: the one that knew why he had to do this, and the one who was actually able to bear the strain of doing it.

For reasons beyond his interest or knowledge, Bumblebee had been summoned to the operational headquarters of the local branch of the Autobot military. It had been a long drive to get there from his previous posting, an exhausting epilogue to his previous mission, in itself an immediate sequel to his own time as a POW, with barely enough breathing room for a physical recovering from that trauma. Or as near a physical recovery as Bumblebee would ever be able to make. His voice had not seemed so precious to him when he'd had it, but losing it had all but crushed him.

Time was putting him back together psychologically, but he knew that he was still mentally and emotionally hemorrhaging, leaking sanity and stability from every crack in his battered armor. Too many pieces of him were broken or missing for Bumblebee to ever go back to the way he'd been. But he _was_ healing, however slowly and painfully.

There had been a time, long ago, when a soldier as beaten as Bumblebee would be retired and sent home. Not so long ago, he would at least have been spared active duty for some time. But the Autobots were up against a wall. Their numbers were few and dropping rapidly. The war was being lost, the Decepticons were gaining ground inch by inch every minute of every day. There weren't enough Scouts left for even one of their number to go down for any length of time. It was cruel, yes, but it was an evil done by the universe itself -or the Decepticons if you wanted to look at it that way- not the Autobot commanders. For the Autobots, everything was about survival.

So, tired as he was, Bumblebee did not resent the message containing his orders. He was not bitter about the long, hard drive he'd been forced to undertake. He was not angry with the Prime who had summoned him, knowing that what few Primes were left had no time to spare. Based on how long he'd been out of touch, for all Bumblebee knew, this Prime might well be the last left standing, because the Decepticons had long targeted Primes above all others, taking insane risks at times, because the reward for them was worth the price if they could take even one Prime permanently off the battlefield.

Bumblebee knew this Prime, at least indirectly. Even without proof, Bumblebee knew this wasn't the first time Optimus Prime had asked for him by name. The missions Bee had gotten from this particular Prime weren't always the most dangerous, but often they were the most demanding and time sensitive. As a carrier of intel, Bumblebee didn't always know what his information would ultimately be used for, but he did know that he often carried intel that few Autobots -let alone Scouts- would be trusted with.

Since his capture and torture by Megatron, that had only become more true, because now the Decepticons knew him by name and by sight. They would not bother trying to torture him a second time, because they had learned that he could not be broken. It had been Megatron's intention for him to die, and if the Decepticon leader ever saw him again that was exactly what would happen. The Decepticons would never capture him again, because there was no use in capturing an Autobot that could not be broken. If they caught him, they would kill him. That meant any and all information was now and forever safe in Bumblebee's mind, permanently inaccessible to the Decepticons because they didn't understand how very close they had come to breaking him, didn't understand that he wasn't just a machine that could be rebuilt to the same specifications as before, that he was weaker now, wounded, and vulnerable (this primarily because they refused to believe it was true of themselves). Because they didn't understand that, the Decepticons could not use it to their advantage. Bumblebee preferred it that way. He would rather die than suffer again at the hands of Megatron.

The Scout drove through the smoking husks of long-abandoned cities, evacuated before the fires of war had reached them. If they were lucky. They looked better in the dark, because then you couldn't see the damage so well, especially if you didn't use any lights and left it to the stars to give you enough light to see. Then, if you used your imagination, you could pretend the cities weren't just ghosts of their former selves. Not that Bumblebee had much experience with cities. By the time he'd come online, the only thing left to do was to pick a side, Autobot or Decepticon. There wasn't much of anything else left.

It was strange, that he could long for and miss something he'd never really known. But he did.

Finally he reached his destination. After so many hours driving, it felt good to finally transform and stretch. He loved to drive, and especially to drive fast, because everything looked better going by at a hundred miles an hour, but even he got cramps after driving too long.

Bumblebee didn't stop to engage with his surroundings though, but headed to the first Autobot he could find and asked after the Prime. He'd been told to report immediately, and that meant not only reaching the destination quickly, but tracking down the Prime as rapidly as possible as well. The Autobot waved him towards a building, or what was left of one, and Bumblebee shortly located the Prime within.

It wasn't hard. Primes weren't difficult to identify. You could just feel a power to them, a controlled strength that radiated from within that nobody else from the newest recruit to the oldest veteran possessed. You didn't find that in Scouts, Warriors, Medics or anything else. Only Primes. Not even Megatron was so strong a presence. And of course being in the presence of Megatron one knew only fear, nothing else. In the presence of a Prime, there might be a case of nerves, but it was more awe and respect that struck Bumblebee when he was around a Prime. And this Prime was on another level altogether. This Prime, called Optimus, was in a class of his own, Bumblebee could feel it.

Bumblebee forgot to identify himself, barely managing to say, _{Reporting as ordered, sir.}_

Long habit had taught him to keep information, including his name, to himself, even though it was protocol to identify yourself to a Prime when reporting in. Even if they had seen you before. Primes had contact with so many, they couldn't be expected to remember every lowly Scout's name. Bumblebee was not only overwhelmed by the feeling surrounding this Prime, but also by the knowledge that he had been asked for by name. Optimus Prime _knew_ his name, and had gone to some lengths to contact him specifically; pulling him almost directly out of the field.

The Prime elected to let the evident impertinence slide. There were more important matters.

"Cybertron is dying," the Prime said, his voice a low rumble of sorrow that Bumblebee felt to his core. He must have looked startled, because the Prime added, "You shouldn't look so surprised. It was you who drew my attention to that fact, which has gone ignored for too long. You know that you are among the youngest Cybertronians in existence, one of the last to have come online. You know as well as I that the end is near, regardless of who strikes the winning blow in this war."

Bumblebee knew that. How could he not? But he couldn't imagine how it was that he'd drawn the Prime's attention to it. Must've been some bit of intel he'd delivered and since forgotten about. Bumblebee seldom knew the significance of what the intel he carried was, and practically never knew what the end result of it would be.

 _{I am aware,}_ the Scout admitted, yet felt the need to quickly add, _{But I choose not to dwell on the negative. We are not dead, not yet, and so we have no right to act like we are.}_

"Be that as it may, we need a contingency plan. In case evacuation becomes necessary."

 _{What would you have me do?}_

He suspected he already knew. But with Primes, one should never assume anything.

"There is a planet some distance from here, known as Earth. I need you to scout it, determine the nature of its lifeforms and methods of evasion. Make no mistake, this is a planet belonging to others, not us. We cannot behave as Decepticons. We must coexist, or conceal ourselves. We must not interfere with the lives of these creatures, or hinder their development. It is their planet, not ours. Do you understand?"

 _{Covert op. Observe and report back,}_ the Scout said crisply, even though inside he was churning with excitement and fear, _{Do not engage. If captured, do not resist with violence. Understood, sir.}_

"Bumblebee," Optimus Prime said slowly, "I have to make sure you really do understand. You cannot, for any reason whatsoever, harm the creatures of that planet. No matter what."

The Scout nodded, this time saying nothing. He understood.

"Take a good look around, because you may never see this planet again. Get some rest, you leave in the morning. Dismissed."

Bumblebee nodded again, turned and walked out. He didn't ask how he was meant to communicate his findings over such distances, or how he was supposed to get there in the first place. He was putting his complete faith in the Prime that those details were taken care of. If asked, the Scout would have replied simply that he'd go where he was sent, do what was asked of him, everything else be damned.

To his mind, that was what Scouts did.

* * *

Unlike the Scout, Optimus had doubts. He hoped he was making the right decision. If he was not, there was no telling how high the cost might be, especially for the Scouts he was sending out into the unknown.

That's what Scouts were for. It's what they did. But that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous.

There were many reasons to send Bumblebee rather than any other Scout to Earth, the farthest flung planet to which any Scout was being dispatched. Bumblebee was experienced, and was exceptionally skilled. But he was also dangerous since narrowly surviving torture at the hands of Megatron.

A recent report on him detailed a Scout teetering on the edge of becoming a Rogue. Optimus hoped some distance from the Decepticons and the war itself would help stabilize the Scout. He didn't want to lose Bumblebee, Optimus was convinced he was the best Scout the Autobot army had.

The Scout did not know -but could easily guess- that Optimus had another motive in sending him, beyond the seemingly inevitably coming death of Cybertron itself. Energon was in short supply and constant demand. Worse, the Decepticons were better at taking it than the Autobots were. They were at once stealthier and more aggressive. And their numbers were greater.

There seemed only one course, and that was to hide energon somewhere beyond Decepticon reach. Bumblebee was not the only Scout being sent out to find a place to hide energon. But he was one of the few who knew that the real reason for doing so was that Optimus anticipated the end of Cybertron.

Bumblebee knew the score, perhaps better than anyone. He would know that energon must be taken to locations off world for the Autobots to stand a chance of surviving without Cybertron. The specifics did not need to be discussed. He either knew them, or did not care to know them. The fate of the Autobots now lay in the hands of Bumblebee, and other Scouts like him.

Perhaps, Optimus thought reflectively, it always had.


	3. Chapter 2

Bumblebee's first night on Earth was an exercise in disorientation.

The distance to Earth was incredible, and up until recently thought to be insurmountable. But it wasn't the journey to get there that upset Bumblebee, it was the shock of the difference between the world he'd left and the one he'd arrived on. The buildings and roads that had made up the entirety of Bumblebee's home-world were nowhere in evidence. Instead, there were things he couldn't describe, and had no name for. Big things, small things, noisy things and quiet things. Things of shapes he'd never seen, and in a variety of colors that were as varied as they were dazzling. Even the sky was a different color.

He'd arrived at night, and one of the first things he managed to absorb enough to understand was the fact that the stars were different. Not only were they brighter, they were placed differently. He'd known that would be the case, space travel wasn't new for Cybertronians. But knowing how something would be and experiencing that reality were -in this case literally- worlds apart. It was one thing to know the stars would be different, that their positioning would look so different from this angle that he would be virtually unable to pinpoint his home-world by means of the stars, even given his not unusual ability to picture in his head how the same stars would look from another angle. But it was quite thoroughly another to actually look up and see that.

Most Cybertronians traveled by GPS and other tracking systems. But those could be picked up by sensors looking for such things. Scouts -and indeed anyone who traveled near or behind enemy lines for long- learned to travel and mark their location by the stars. Landmarks were too subject to destruction to be trusted. But stars were slow to change. Bumblebee hadn't lived long enough to see the stars change significantly. He wondered for the first time if anyone had.

It was not idly that he gazed at these strange stars. From now until further notice, Bumblebee would be traveling an unknown world. Strange as they looked to him, the fact that there were stars he could see meant that he would never be lost. The stars would always tell him where he was. And -somewhere out there in the depth of space- there was Cybertron, and what remained of her people. So long as there were stars in the sky, he would never be entirely cut off from home, no matter how far it seemed.

And right now it seemed very, _very_ far away.

What was most immediately extraordinary of all to him was how the ground felt. It wasn't just that it was made of tiny loose particles instead of something solid either. Bumblebee had walked enough sites of bombings to be used to stuff so finely broken it was little more than dust underfoot. It was the way the planet seemed to almost throb. It wasn't a thing he felt physically, but he could sense it right down to the core of his being. It was like a pulse somewhere beneath the surface, almost like the way the beat of another's spark felt if you were unfortunate enough to have experienced it. Only there wasn't anything terrible about it really, though everything was a little scary right now because it was all new and strange. It finally hit him: the planet felt _alive_.

Until that realization struck home, Bumblebee hadn't fully comprehended just how deathly sick Cybertron had become. He'd never had another planet to compare it to. Not really. But now he did, and as the life beat of Earth pulsed beneath him, he felt suddenly smaller and weaker than he'd ever been. Cybertron was home. He'd known he might never see it again. Known it was dying. Yet still it both deeply hurt and inexplicably excited him to know that he was standing on a planet that was very much alive, that had perhaps eons of life left in her. The world was so alien to him, he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life here. But he at last understood consciously what he had known without realizing it all along; not only was he unlikely to see Cybertron again, there really wasn't anything to go back to anyway. Cybertron. His home. Gone forever.

It was a sobering insight, and it made this world seem all the more menacing and strange.

The information that could be obtained remotely about the planet was disturbingly limited. He had a few surface-level facts, and knew what the specific lifeforms to which the planet belonged looked like, but what little he knew was nowhere near enough.

Turning his face from the sky, Bumblebee looked about him with an amount of wonder and curiosity, but primarily a coldly gnawing fear, the same that slithered through the energon in his veins whenever he was sent on a mission with too little intel. Danger lurked in every shadow, around every corner in those missions, because he never knew what he'd meet and when. But this was an immeasurable number of times worse, because danger could be staring him in the face and he wouldn't know it until it was too late. Anything and everything could be a threat, and he had no way of knowing one way or the other unless and until he investigated.

Bumblebee had arrived in an area that was clear but sheltered by great stones that reminded him of the bedrock of Cybertron, what lay underneath all those streets and buildings. Some of the stones were smaller than one of the joints on the fingers of his hands, others stood several times taller than he did, towering over everything and casting black shadows across the landscape, even blacker in the night. Cliffs and canyons and mountains lay behind and around him. In front of him was something he had difficulty comprehending at first. Organic poles taller than he was spread branches from which hung what seemed to be strings and strands of dark green organic matter.

It was the first time Bumblebee had ever seen trees, and he had no name for them.

There were many things for which he had no name, and he quickly saw that it would be insufficient to simply identify these things as "organic" because _everything_ here seemed to be except the rocks, and maybe even those. He'd never seen so much organic matter all in one place, a thick tangle of bright and dark interwoven, all without aid of technology. Cybertronians themselves were bio-mechanical, which to them meant something both organic and inorganic, both machine and living being. While it was possible to build purely mechanical devices, it had never occurred to Bumblebee that a thing could be entirely the opposite. No metal parts, no nuts or bolts or wires held the things here together. Instead, they were built of and kept in form by mysteries means the nature of which escaped Bumblebee.

And so many things were so _small_. Smaller than a minicon. Smaller than a scraplet. So small that he had trouble seeing some of them. Some might be smaller still, like the components that came together to make energon, which could only be seen with the aid of manufactured devices designed specifically for looking at things tinier than even the most powerful optics could make out.

And Bumblebee had good optics. All Scouts had excellent vision, second only to that of snipers. It was necessary for their job. However, unlike any other soldiers, Scouts had the ability to not only record what they saw and play it back for themselves later, they had an internal system that was able to extrapolate details from what they saw and make educated guesses, and give a playback that was essentially in third person. It was useful stuff, but kind of disquieting the first time you did it.

Bumblebee would not only memorize what he saw and offer written reports, but would send back snapshots or motion capture of what he'd seen, allowing insight to those on Cybertron that was beyond what he could merely write. It would be beyond what he guessed and supposed and theorized, and above what he thought was important to share. It would be literally everything he knew, even the stuff he knew without knowing, because things would be captured that he wouldn't necessarily consciously remember, or that he didn't realized the significance of.

Noises, loud and quiet, made their assault on his senses. Cybertron was actually a pretty quiet place. Outside of battlefields, the cities lay like graveyards, without residents or machinery to generate any sound. In a few, you could hear the scuttling of scraplets or insecticons if you paid close enough attention. But otherwise it was just the keening wind, and the indescribable essence of sound that came with both night and day. Here though, there was noise. So much noise Bumblebee found himself slightly stunned, standing still and trying to sort it all out. There were so many sounds that at first it seemed like a single deafening voice just shouting mindlessly into the cosmos.

He did not know birds or insects. He did not know the sound of wind fluting through the trees, did not know the creaking of wood as the air buffeted against sturdy trunks and swaying branches. He knew the sound of dust rattling in the air when it was picked up by a breeze, but did not know the sound of tiny pebbles against great boulders as the wind shoved them along. Beneath it all was the sound of the Earth itself, inaudible to most of the creatures native to its surface, but at first overwhelming to Bumblebee not because of its volume, but the sheer power it conveyed. The Earth itself seemed to be a great beast upon which myriad other creatures scurried, slithered and flew.

Gradually, he began to filter out the noises. He soon gave up trying to guess what they were, but he did a first impression assessment of whether the sounds were sudden, sharp and infrequent or seemingly continuous. Some of the noises he determined were just the ambient sounds of this place, a kind of tuneless background music that was unceasing and eternal. Nothing to be concerned about. But so many more noises -a truly, deeply alarming number of them in fact- had to go into a mental bin marked "I Have No Idea What That Is."

Most things seemed small, somewhat slow and probably harmless. But Bumblebee knew only too well that the most dangerous thing to a Cybertronian -Autobot or Decepticon- was a scraplet, and scraplets were tiny. Small didn't mean harmless, it only meant harder to notice and keep track of.

An ululant sound, like the sharp wail of worn brake pads, pierced the night and Bumblebee flinched, crouching instinctively as he sought to pinpoint the source of the sound. The cry rose, fell, rose again, and finally faded away until only its echo remained in the rimrocks. It was answered by a shriek that filled the air like a shrill rebuke, a sound that seemed set to consume the night, then cut off sharply. The high howling sound repeated like a challenge, Bumblebee felt it rumbling in his chest, bouncing off the empty spaces under his armor, but this time when it faded it went unanswered.

Rather than immediately mobilize, Bumblebee decided to stay put for the moment. He needed to listen to the night, and learn what it was before going out in it. Not that there was any guarantee of safety if he stayed put. But with so little security anywhere, he clung to the imaginary bit of safety in this falsely familiar location where he'd started as if it were a life-raft.

This was a long-term assignment, and nobody would be asking for hourly progress reports. In fact, he wasn't entirely convinced anyone would receive his reports at all. He had no means of telling if the reports he sent out ever reached their destination. There were ways to establish true communication between Earth and Cybertron, but the resource cost was beyond unfeasible; such a setup would be absolutely indefensible. And the last thing the Autobots needed was the Decepticons zeroing in on Earth, especially since they only had one lone Scout on the whole of the planet just now.

With the quiet patience of the experienced Scout, Bumblebee sat and waited for the dawn, listening to and recording every sound he heard in the night, watching the moon traverse across the sky and eventually drop from view, feeling the wind as it brushed past him on its way across the planet. Gradually he began to categorize the things he saw and heard, to file them away in his memory for later recollection as needed. And then out of the grayness came the first fiery rays of dawn, a slash of color across the sky so bright and unexpected that for a moment Bumblebee paid attention to nothing else.

In fairness, there wasn't a lot else to pay attention to, for all the nocturnal creatures had gone silent, and the diurnal ones had yet to awake. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath as the night gave up its starry throne to the brightness of the coming day.

There were sunrises on Cybertron, but not that looked like this. The skyline turned a flaming yellow, casting the landscape below into deeper black because the sky made optics adjust to an increase in light even though the ground was still the domain of the shadows. But not for long. As Bumblebee watched, a searing orange fanned out from the center of yellow, which seemed to grow by the moment, the prelude to the rising of the sun. The night in the sky fled before the dawn, momentarily robbing the ceiling of the world of its color, turning it an empty white-gray. The orange glow continued to spread, and cracks and streaks of other colors started to cut across the sky.

And then there was the sun, so bright at the center that Bumblebee's optics couldn't adjust enough to see it without going totally blind to all that surrounded it. The Earth's sun was brighter than anything Bumblebee had ever looked at, even the sun of Cybertron. It was brighter than an explosion, brighter than a star, brighter than a spark. So bright Bumblebee had trouble even believing it was real.

The creatures of the Earth must've let out a collective breath, for suddenly chirps and whistles and cries of all new kinds filled the air, which was moving again. The trees rustled with the life that was in them, and the breath of the new day that was washing over them.

And then a flood of colors came tearing loose, as if the sun itself had held them overnight to protect them from the darkness. The sun blazed up from the horizon as a thousand shades of green and brown came into the organic world surrounding Bumblebee. Flashes of red and blue, so small they were hard to see, suddenly flitted from one patch of green to another. Yellow stood out in the green, blended in the brown. Bits of white glowed from behind the shadows. Purple and pink struck out across the sky before it washed blue with the completion of the sunrise.

Struck dumb with awe, Bumblebee wondered if sunrise on Cybertron had ever been like that. He couldn't see how his kind had ever found the time for war if Cybertron had been this way. It was so vibrantly alive, everywhere you looked, it was hard to believe death even existed at all.

Yet Bumblebee knew it did. He had recorded such the night before. Small creatures catching other small creatures, killing and consuming them in the manner of scraplets. It had chilled him to watch. Beneath the beauty, Earth was a violent place. He must not forget that.

But in the afterglow of the alien sunrise, for a moment he found that he felt at peace, and he couldn't find it in himself to believe it. To him, peace was as foreign as the Earth itself.


	4. Chapter 3

Bumblebee's explorations had taken him quickly south, as his initial location proved unfeasibly cold when night came. Cybertronians were slow to be affected by cold, and it took extreme below freezing temperatures over long periods of time to bring them down, but the nights had been getting steadily colder for the short time Bumblebee had remained in the area, and he had quickly recalled the minimal intel on the planet, which told him that to the south lay the equator, where it would be warmer.

He'd initially been dropped in the vicinity of the Northern pole, just off it enough that there were trees. Bumblebee didn't yet know them as trees, but he had come up with a designation for them, and for several other things he'd seen. He didn't know it, but his chosen labels were rapidly changed to "more fitting terms" by those receiving his reports. In the long run it wouldn't matter, because it would eventually be that the Autobots and Decepticons would both adopt the vernacular common to humans. Bumblebee didn't know that either. In fact, so far he had not seen any humans at all.

Recently, the sky had begun to seem to hang low. Bumblebee was bewildered by the clouds of Earth. There were other planets aside from Cybertron out there, and Cybertronians had visited their share of them. But Bumblebee was neither scientist nor historian, and so the sight of the clouds was mysterious to him, and he did not know what to do with the drop in temperature and the change in air pressure. It bothered him that he no longer saw the stars at night, nor the moon or even the bright sun. The wind seemed alternately to blow frantically and grow deathly still for lengthy periods. Leeched of color, the world turned an ashen gray. Bumblebee didn't like that either.

After a rapid journey to the south where the nights weren't cold enough to cause him any trouble, Bumblebee had begun to travel in something like large, almost lazy circles. There was a method to his madness. He was building a map in his head in the most efficient way he knew how. It was a necessarily slow process because he had to not only log everything of consequence he saw, but also sometimes had to spend hours or days trying to figure out what it was that he was seeing, at least to a sufficient degree that he could make a satisfactory report on it.

In some ways, his reports were breathtakingly without detail from a human's point of view. For him, trees were trees. Rocks were rocks, unless they contained some sort of mineral he could recognize and knew the use of, which they mostly didn't. Birds were birds, though really any flighted thing was thrust into a singular category, meaning he at present classified bats and moths as being the same thing... more or less. He made no distinction between herbivores and carnivores; all were eaters of organic matter to his way of thinking. To him, only humans would be distinct, and even then only because he had been explicitly warned about them, for they were determined to have language and build tools and other things which could be recognized from remote recon as "intelligent and even sentient" behaviors.

By Cybertronian standards, Bumblebee was an excellent Scout, meaning his reports were as detailed as necessary without sacrificing brevity. The reason he made no distinction between one tree and another wasn't because he couldn't _see_ any difference, but because he could see no reason to _care_ about that difference. To him, the difference made no difference and so wasn't worth remarking on.

It was also quickly evident to him that most things lived so briefly that making note of them as individuals was a waste of time. Better to merely identify the kind of thing that inhabited certain areas. Flying things, ground dwelling things, things that moved and things that didn't. Size was of great importance, some things averaged larger in some areas than in others. But of utmost relevance was the stone of the Earth. Cliffs, mountains, caverns. These were the things that might withstand the eons, and which might have the most tactical relevance to the Autobots.

Perhaps because of the time of year, or the location, or sheer dumb luck, Bumblebee had not yet stumbled across any bodies of water of any great size. Puddles and streams were crossed over with his hardly even noticing them. But he was about to have his first encounter with water from the sky.

Later, Bumblebee would understand that there were warning signs. A thousand signs or more, in fact. But the first time the sky cracked open with lightning and thunder and unleashed a torrent of rust-inducing fluids that came down from like an escaping and endless flood, it hit Bumblebee like a shock.

He let out an unaccustomed buzz of alarm and careened off to the left involuntarily as the reflex to flee kicked in and took over. Bumblebee had no concept at first of what was falling from the sky, or if it was dangerous or how to avoid it. Having been in vehicle mode, struggling with the utter lack of anything resembling a road on Earth, Bumblebee almost immediately slammed muffler first into a tree, fortunately without enough force to do more than dent his pride.

Ripples of terror shuddered through him as he realized what was falling on him.

Incomprehension filled every corner of his mind at what had up until this moment seemed a blatant impossibility to him: water was falling from the sky. It was raining a hideous chemical formula of hydrogen and oxygen which was practically tailor-made to interact with the metals of Bumblebee's body and armor to produce rust. Wet, cold, slow Death was raining from the sky; the solid dirt under him was being turned to a churning, sucking mud that seemed determined to establish a spark-draining grip on his wheels, a lethal trap from which he would be unable to escape.

Near-panic stricken, Bumblebee transformed and bolted, looking for a way out, for shelter. Something, anything. He'd never been drenched with water before, he'd only heard horror stories with regards to rusting from the inside out, and that was what made it all the more terrifying. Flight, trying to outrun the menace from the clouds, was the only thing he could think of.

As a Scout, Bumblebee was used to being out in the field alone, but this was a level of isolation beyond anything he had ever experienced. Not only was he alone, beyond help or helping, he had no directive to override his fear. He had no direction he was sent in, no command to carry out, nothing to take from here to there. With only the vague instruction to Scout and report back, there was nothing to tell him where he must go or what he must do. There was no one to protect, no one who could protect him. There was nothing but an all-consuming terror that welled up unchecked until it overflowed.

But there was nowhere to go.

He didn't realize it, but though Bumblebee had launched off in a straight line, he was heading into the storm instead of out of it. Panic can't be sustained long, and Bumblebee calmed down long before he found the edge of the storm. It came to him that he was not actually being hurt, but he could wind up hurting himself by a headlong flight through unfamiliar territory. He had to slow down, to settle, to get a grip on himself, to figure out what was _really_ happening.

Finally he got a collar on his fear while crouching under the cover of some pines that kept the worst of the rain off him. From his rather soggy shelter, he watched the rain fall in blinding curtains. He heard the roar of thunder in the sky, saw the flash of lightning slashing across the swollen clouds above. The wind kicked up, tossing the rain to the side roughly as it cut across the landscape. Because of the unusual way Bumblebee's optics processed light, for a time it was darker than night to him. The clouds hung so low they seemed like they were almost touching the ground. The rain seemed to rip through the air in its determination to reach the ground, falling with sufficient force to inflict damage on the trees; damage made all the worse by the rising force of the wind.

Throughout the storm, Bumblebee sat beneath the trees and trembled.

Despite the meager shelter of the trees, Bumblebee felt the water seeping under his armor, getting into every joint, seeking to reach deeper still. But it couldn't get through to his spark, or the energon flowing through his veins. Not yet anyway. But Bumblebee knew the dangers of corrosion, and he knew he was in trouble if he didn't get dried out. He also knew that he had encountered the first urgent red flag to send back:

Danger - Water falls unexpectedly.

Not being any kind of a scientist, he nonetheless suspected that some sort of protection against rust could be developed, if it didn't exist already. Any and all Autobots who came to Earth would require it. Even if there were ways to stay out of the falling water, inevitably there would come a time when exposure to it could not be avoided. There would come a battle with the Decepticons, or something of equal importance, and there would be no option but to leave shelter and take on the threat even in the rain. Bumblebee had no illusions that the Autobots would confine themselves to a water-free portion of the planet. He knew the Autobot and Decepticon war, and he knew that if it came here it would engulf the world. That was the eventuality that he had to anticipate, even though he hoped it wouldn't come to that. Bumblebee had to assume at every step that one day the war would come to Earth.

Before long, he would realize how much water was all over Earth, and how often the rain fell on most of it. At that point, he would understand that avoidance was impossible even barring the possibility of war. Water was a fact of existence on Earth. In fact, it was essential to all forms of life on the planet. But just now, he couldn't even begin to imagine that possibility, and he wondered how the lifeforms on this planet could survive such a damaging chemical falling from the sky.

When the storm eventually cleared, Bumblebee was surprised to hear the song of the flying creatures. Chirps, whistles, caws, wails, and caterwauls filled the air around him. He heard in them the sort of buzzing that came from him when his emotions became too wild for him to form even basic speech, when he was just making wordless sounds to express himself. The birds sounded anything but distressed about the storm they had just weathered. In fact, it sounded surprisingly gleeful, as if the birds were celebrating, beginning life anew.

Still crouched in the trees, he was able to see as the birds, large and small, began to shake off their feathers and preen, and he watched in astonishment as some of them flitted from branch to branch, seeming to chase each other around, some with hostility and others looking as if they were only seeking to play. With all the noise and activity, Bumblebee was left with the impression that the rain had somehow generated more of these spritely lifeforms than had existed before, though he couldn't fathom how it was possible.

In the coming days, he received a deeper shock, as the formerly dominantly brown landscape of the area flushed bright green. He observed as the plants not only turned color, but began to expand at almost terrifying speed. Plants got taller, and spread themselves in all directions. And then suddenly there were more colors, a million little points of color, which seemed to endlessly attract bright flying creatures. Flowers and nectar eaters burst into action. Grazers plowed through the grasses, foraging on blades and leaves without apparent discrimination. Predators hunted everywhere, both day and night. Inexplicably, the rain seemed to have taken the pulse of life on Earth up, and suddenly it was actively everywhere, in a vibrant and seemingly endless array of designs.

This wasn't just the Earth.

This was life.


	5. Chapter 4

Time was passing, but Bumblebee was only intermittently and begrudgingly aware of it. After the heavy rains, the mud had been too treacherous for driving, but now that a steady sun-driven heat had begun to settle, the mud dried into dirt, which in its turn flew up into dust as Bumblebee drove over it.

He bitterly missed roads. Rough terrain was hard on the shock-absorbers, and the area he was exploring now seemed to be the roughest yet. Rocks jutted up with unexpected cruelty to stick him in the tires or undercarriage as he drove, scraping what little remained of his paint job and giving his armor a few new scratches he could've done without. Trees and brush blocked his path, forcing him to swerve sharply and often, and preventing him from scouting with any real speed.

The rains had left their mark. For all he could do to get dry and avoid each downpour when it came, he still couldn't quite prevent the rust from getting started in places he couldn't get properly exposed to air. He could feel it in there. It didn't hurt exactly, it was just a feeling of being... well, a little bit off. Worse, the rains had left floods in their wake, rivers and lakes that had been long dried up before Bumblebee came, but which now ran deep and fast. Submergence was not on Bumblebee's bucket list, and he did what he could to go around or over these obstacles, further slowing his explorations.

It was frustrating, and Bumblebee's limited patience was fast running out. It was beginning to seem to him that too much life was overrated. Having driven cycles in empty cities devoid of life had seemed depressing, but at least then there wasn't an abundance of foliage blocking his way every few feet; at least then he'd known where he was going and how to get there.

Sometimes he felt like he was acting randomly, just wandering with little aim or purpose. He was so far from Cybertron, it was difficult to believe anything he did here could ever really matter. No matter how many cliffs, canyons, mountains and valleys he mapped, what difference could it really make? In the end, who on Cybertron would care about what was on this miserable rock, infested as it was with organic life, overrun to the point of there almost being nowhere to stand, and filled to the brim with - _ugh_ \- water? Surely this was no place for Cybertronians to live!

Of course, in war, sometimes the most inhospitable places make the best strongholds. The same things that make them unwelcoming also make them hostile to the enemy. Bumblebee had more than once used that to his advantage hiding behind enemy lines. The best places to avoid enemy contact were unexploded mine fields, scraplet infested plague cities, that kind of place. Just so long as you avoided the hostiles in the environment itself, you'd do pretty well in spots like that.

It should have been hard to imagine Earth as a stronghold, but Bumblebee could do it only too easily.

Distance and time were working on him in many ways, not the least of which was a recovery of his shattered nerve. After his torture at the hands of Megatron, Bumblebee had been broken in more than body. Just before his reassignment, an incident involving a Warrior named Cliffjumper had initiated a turnaround in him, but it took time to go from a sense of utter futility, of bitter anger and fear and weakness to something... better. But his distance from home and time alone was also instilling a spark-deep loneliness more profound than any he'd felt. Missing his home, he found reasons not to like Earth. Since he never received any indication that his reports were even received, he began to feel as if he'd been forgotten these millions of miles away from home. The war was going on without him, might even be over (for better or worse) for all he knew.

Sometimes at night, Bumblebee was plagued by the fear that the Autobots had lost, been destroyed, and that he was to be left on this alien world alone. _Forever_. At those times the fear struck so deep at the spark of him that he couldn't rest, and so he would travel as fast as the terrain allowed until he was too exhausted to be afraid anymore. Then he'd find some secluded spot where he wouldn't be easily spotted by anything more menacing than one of the furry wild things that roamed through the forests and plains, and there he would just stop. It wasn't even really a stasis nap. It was just stopping for awhile. Time and space seemed to go away and he didn't even dream, just stopped.

Then at some point he'd become aware of a sound. He'd stir from his daze, and take in his surroundings. He'd notice a shift in the time of day or night. He'd note any changes in the air, of temperature or humidity or wind or anything like that. He'd listen and watch for awhile, making sure all the sounds and sights were in order. And then he'd set out again.

There would come a time when his limit was reached. He knew that. His energon would run out, or the rust would get him. Either way, he couldn't continue indefinitely. Sooner or later, he would need help. It was hard to trust in what he couldn't see. But Bumblebee had laid his loyalty at the feet of the Prime called Optimus, and there too was placed his faith. And so he did his job, avoided thinking about tomorrow, tried not to think about yesterday, and kept moving forward, ever deeper into the unknown.

In some ways, it seemed that was all he'd ever done. Almost from the moment he'd come online, Bumblebee's life had been one plunge into the unknown after another. He'd chosen to join the Autobots before he truly understood the difference between the one side and the other, acting on pure instinct. His first sight of a Prime had sent a current of what felt like electricity through him, and he'd just _known_. He'd had to pick a side, and choose fast or get dead. There was something in the nature of Primes that called to him, and he followed without needing to understand why.

He was just a rookie when the procedure for implanting personal weapons was rolled out. He didn't have the experience to know what it meant, but he reflexively went for it anyway. It was painful in those days, and it took time to learn how to use implanted weapons, but he'd done it anyway. And when he'd been given the option for extra changes to aid him in his duties as a Scout, he'd pounced on them long before any of them became mandatory. It wasn't because he wasn't scared. It wasn't because he really understood what he was getting into. It was because it had felt right. In fact, Bumblebee had made a career of seeming to think on his feet when it was really just reacting, just trusting his instincts, and following the rules laid down for him by his superiors.

Bumblebee didn't know where he was going, but there was one thing he knew above all others: To the last beat of his spark, he would choose to serve not just the Autobots, but the Primes. He didn't know there was now only one remaining, but it didn't matter. Even if there had been none, he still would've done his best to do what he believed they would want of him. Even if that meant driving around on this unbelievably primitive and alien dust-ball until he fell apart. He didn't think of it as being particularly remarkable. It was just a simple fact to him, like any other, one he took a bit for granted actually.

Half lost in thought, barely paying attention on that hot, bright afternoon, lulled into a rather relaxed state by the increasing sense of familiarity, Bumblebee realized he'd driven several miles without having to wrestle any trees and somehow he hadn't really noticed. It startled him that he could be so lax in his attention, but even more he was surprised by the landscape which surrounded him.

Though the landscape had of course changed gradually, Bumblebee had been traveling fast, and in a straighter line than usual. He'd left behind the forests for mixed-woodlands, which had gradually thinned into true plains, but now he'd hit something new under the tires: sand.

Ahead there rolled desert dunes with thin plant life scattered across and hugging close to the ground. There was something inexplicably different about the tree-like plants, that made Bumblebee classify them without thinking as something Other. He'd come up with a label later. The sand felt different from the dirt or rock he'd grown used to (and was decidedly unlike grass or moss), shifting beneath his tires strangely. Even the wind sounded different.

More shocking than any of this however was the fact that Bumblebee had grown accustomed enough to Earth to view this as strange in comparison to what he'd already seen. Without even picking up on it, Bumblebee had become used to the way this alien world felt and looked, enough that this new spot made him realize anew the Earth's strangeness. Different parts of Cybertron were not so notably dissimilar. Everywhere the mark of the Cybertronians had been made deep, with roads, with structures, with tech. Decepticon or Autobot, the buildings and bridges pretty much looked the same, and you could always predict what sort of structures lay ahead by looking at the power conduits where you were or something. There wasn't much about the climate that could be remarked on about Cybertron. Even if there had been, Cybertronians were largely indifferent to changes in temperature unless the shift was a drop or rise of about a hundred degrees. It not only didn't affect them, they didn't even notice.

Bumblebee noted it was hot here, cold where he'd started, because of the vast difference in temperature between here and there, but at first it didn't really impress upon him that the changes in the environment had anything to do with that. He'd begun to make the association between greenery and rainfall, and suspected that meant this new landscape didn't see much of either.

At first, the sand threw Bumblebee off. He slid in new ways when he tried to turn, got bogged down when he didn't expect it, and hitting the brakes threw up a truly enormous and utterly blinding cloud of dust. But after a bit of practice, he found he loved it. It was fun to kick up sand, and sliding turns had never felt more exciting. It was new turf to him, but he felt like he'd been built for it.

Though he had a vehicle mode, Bumblebee did not yet have the form of an Earth vehicle, largely because he hadn't seen one yet. In fact, he hadn't even seen any humans, or signs of human habitation. Right now, he wasn't worried about that. He was having a blast racing the wind across the sand, pursuing dust devils across the dunes, and using the cacti as a kind of obstacle course to dodge in and out of as practice for his fast precision turns. For a time, there was nothing in his thoughts but the feel of the sand speeding beneath him, the wind blowing across him, and the sun streaming down.

For the first time in a long time, Bumblebee was having fun. He hadn't done that in so long he'd almost forgotten what it felt like. Once he'd started, he didn't want to stop. Fortunately, time was something he suddenly had a lot of, and he could race in circles and figure eights and ovals until he was exhausted. Nobody was trying to kill him, and nobody was there to tell him no.

Bumblebee had been a soldier in the Autobot army for so long, he'd all but forgotten what it was to be free to do what he wanted to do, to go where he wanted to go, to be who he wanted to be. Perhaps this was actually a wholly new experience. He didn't remember much of what life had been like before, partially because there hadn't been very much of a before. Not for him.

His wheels churned up sand as he braked to turn tight circles, then accelerated to race his own shadow across the desert. So often in his line of work, things were slow, confined, enclosed, and in his spark he'd been built for speed. After having been so long cautious and limited in his movement, he was all-but drunk with the sensation as the wind blew across his sleek vehicular form. He felt the sand pinging off him as it was kicked up, but that only added to the experience.

A distant part of him began to wonder if he'd gone mad, while another part suspected he'd been mad all along and simply never noticed, but a more important portion of his consciousness knew that both suppositions were false. In fact, he was the most sane he'd been in a long time.

Coming to a hard stop, a dust cloud enveloping him, Bumblebee knew that something inside him that hadn't been right in so long he'd almost forgotten what it was had suddenly shifted and he felt alive again, alive as he had not been since long before he lost his voice. When he had been sent to Earth, Bumblebee had been mechanically and medically as sound as he would ever be, yet he knew now that there had been a sickness in him, not measurable by scientific means, but there just the same.

It wasn't that a drive through the desert empty of thought about duty and responsibility had healed him, but it was the signal of the start, the beginning of a long, probably painful journey to recovery. He would never be as he was before, he knew that. But he also knew that he could be better than he was now, and that was something to look forward to at last.


	6. Chapter 5

A power-down was necessary after the grossly frivolous expenditure of energy that had been Bumblebee's high speed frolic in the desert. Without the ability to replace his energon, Bumblebee had to be careful about burning it, to conserve energy wherever he could, and a romp in the sand did not fit those parameters.

Bumblebee did not regret the jaunt, and could easily have excused it. As part of his power conservation, Bumblebee avoided transforming whenever possible. Learning to drive a new terrain well would, in the long run, spare him both the energy of having to transform, and whatever energy he might otherwise have to spend if he got into trouble on such terrain. It would also provide useful intel that could be added to his report on the sandy deserts of Earth.

Those were perfectly valid reasons, but Bumblebee couldn't lie to himself. He had run because he wanted to, for the sheer joy of it. Any other reason he put forth was only a false excuse.

A lot of Bots he'd known over the years were in the habit of lying to themselves. They pretended they weren't afraid, put on a show of knowing what to do when they didn't, and called something courage when it was just instinct. Bumblebee knew why, but it was a practice he had learned not to indulge in.

The Scout who fooled himself into thinking his destination was just over that next rise in an effort to prod himself on and make his task seem smaller than it was poured everything he had into getting there, and wound up dying on the other side, a thousand miles from his true destination. The honest Scout, who knew he had miles to go, protected his reserves of strength jealously, and more often than not reached his goal... or at the least died within sight of it.

And too, in the direction of self-deceit lay descent into the Pit. It was the Decepticon way to not only tell untruths to others, but even to themselves. They convinced themselves of their own superiority, the inarguable rightness of their actions, and the justifiable nature of their deplorable means. Their greatest deceit was perhaps to themselves, for none of them saw himself as evil or his morals as corrupt. They not only saw their own way as being better than that of the Autobots, but themselves as being superior to such a degree that they believed there was no type of killing and no level of torture that was unacceptable. No act was too vile, no behavior too cruel, no thought too despicable because -in his own mind- each Decepticon thought himself a god. And that was the biggest deception of all.

So Bumblebee had learned never to pretend his motives were more noble than they were, and did not lie to himself about why he had raced around the desert. He had done it because he felt like it.

He regained awareness to a kind of ticking sound, and the feel of something tapping its way across his roof. It wasn't the first time a bird had landed on him and pecked around curiously, and he knew that if he just stayed still it would eventually go away.

It hopped down onto his hood. It was a big (for a bird), black bird with dark eyes that revealed a surprising intelligence. It ruffled its feathers by shaking itself, and then began to make a noise that sounded surprisingly like a blaster attempting to fire but not having enough power, with a strange popping at the end. The sound seemed to require considerable puffing of the chest feathers.

After a little bit, a second bird came flapping out of the scrub and landed on Bumblebee's roof. It clucked as the first bird had, and the first bird seemed to reply. They did this back and forth a couple of times, and then the second bird flew off, returning with a twig it had either found or pried off a tree. He wondered that something so small was able to fly far enough to find such an item. He was soon to discover that the birds were going to do this over and over, flying however far they had to in order to find the tree bits that they needed in order to construct a nest.

Bumblebee had no concept of what they were doing, of course, but he didn't feel he should move until the birds had gone away. Though they were not the species he had been warned the planet belonged to, as living things they still deserved an amount of courtesy, specifically Bumblebee's not harming them.

Bumblebee had parked himself on a high rocky outcrop overlooking the desert, and the birds seemed to have mistaken him for a part of the cliff, or perhaps a tree. In any case, they spent days building up their nest, and then the female bird sat in it for awhile. Eventually, she laid a clutch of eggs.

Bumblebee couldn't really see them in the nest, but he could still detect their presence. He didn't know they were a kind of pale teal-green color with darker spots and stripes. But he did know that there were five of them. And he knew, though he had never before encountered reproduction in this manner, that they were somehow alive. At first he wasn't sure, but as the days passed, he became certain.

Somehow, from one bird had come... what? Other birds? They didn't seem to be. There were no wings, no flapping, no singing in the morning like birds did. Still with only vague categories, Bumblebee couldn't fathom the reality that a little oval shell filled with goo could one day become a big (relatively speaking) black bird.

In fact, he was so startled when the peeping began that he almost gunned his engine, which would probably have been the death of the baby birds as it would've scared the parents -who had never heard such a noise in their entire lives- away. Fortunately, Bumblebee maintained his self-discipline and remained both silent and motionless.

Not long after the peeping started, Bumblebee was aware of a lot of motion in the nest that wasn't one of the adult birds stomping around. In fact, after the peeping started, sometimes the adults would both leave the nest, though one was always somewhere nearby. But at first Bumblebee didn't see what had started doing all that moving around, just felt little bodies flopping around awkwardly via the shift of twig on his hood.

He saw the adult birds bringing food in before he ever saw the chicks. Already he had grasped that organics ate other organics, and he'd developed a notion that there was a division between plant life and animal life, though he still made no distinction in his mind between herbivores and carnivores. It neither disgusted nor surprised him what the birds brought in to feed their young.

These were ravens, and they were primarily carnivorous. The chicks were voracious little eating machines, who from dawn to dusk seemed to ceaselessly make an "Ah-ah-ha-ha-ah" sound that meant the adults needed to find some organic matter to stick into the shrieking mouth in order to make the sound stop for even a moment. Yet they no sooner got one chick quieted down than another took up the cry, and that was when all five weren't doing it together (which they usually were).

Bumblebee's first sighting of the chicks was just an ugly little pink head with gray fuzz looking as if it had been glued on haphazardly reaching up out of the mighty tower of twigs that was the raven's nest. Bumblebee had seen a lot of ugly things, but he decided that these were perhaps the ugliest. Of course, he was somewhat biased because by that time he was bored out of his mind, and had begun to suffer cramps from having remained motionless for so long. He was also sick to death of hearing the chicks' constant refrain of "Ah-ah-ha-ha-ah."

This was an annoyance he had not been warned about. His training did not cover serving as a nest site for a heap of raven chicks. In fact, his training did not cover ravens -or indeed birds of any sort- at all. The simple fact of the matter when you got right down to it was that Autobots did not -for the most part- fly. They were almost exclusively ground-based as vehicles, and Bumblebee had developed an unconscious antipathy for almost anything airborne.

The birds were also unconscionably messy. Not only did they excrete frequently an unpleasant substance that stuck to and marred the paint-job, they were just as messy with their food, and it seemed to Bumblebee that more of it must wind up on his hood than it did in the mouths of the chicks.

The only thing that staved off any attempt to harm the birds or simply knock them off was his interpretation of his standing orders.

Earth was not his world. It was not his to own. Not his to control. Not his to conquer. Not even really his to live on, though of course live he must. He had inquired in his latest report what precisely he was to do in situations such as this one, but he didn't expect an answer. He had yet to receive anything from Cybertron, even something so minor as confirmation that his messages were getting through.

But one thing the ravens and their nesting did was give him a lot of time to think, a lot of time to go over everything he'd recorded on his travels so far, a lot of time to mine his memory for details and planetary intel that had escaped his notice at the time. That is, when he could even hear himself think over the constant "Ah-ah-ha-ha-ah" of the raven chicks. He did most of his thinking at night, because that was when the chicks were quietest, apparently sleeping.

As annoying as they were however, Bumblebee felt a pang one morning when a chick failed to sound off. He had learned to recognize their voices intimately, and he knew one of the chicks was silent. Though he was sure its body was still in the nest, he sensed keenly its absence, and knew it was dead.

He did not understand what had happened. Nothing had come to kill the chick. He couldn't imagine that it had died from lack of fuel, since the parents were diligent in their feeding, somehow finding enough organic foodstuffs in the desert for one to be flying in with fresh food about the time the other finished giving the chicks all the food it had. It seemed unlikely that the chick had died of exposure, especially since the others were all vibrantly alive and gasping their demands for breakfast as if nothing had changed. Yet still the fact remained that there was one less chick alive in the nest.

The death of the chick hit him harder than he would have expected, and he wished there was something he could do to help the remaining chicks stay alive. But he knew there was not. He also knew that any direct interference on his part would go against his instructions.

Little as he knew about Earth, he had already become keenly aware of the fact that Cybertronians were much too powerful for the life on this planet. Too easily could they become dictators. Too easily could they destroy the planet in a quest to make it the way they wanted it to be. Too easily could even the most well-meaning Autobot become a Decepticon without recognizing the change in himself. And, unlike the Autobots, the creatures of Earth would have no defense against the Decepticons.

So painful as it was, Bumblebee did nothing the day both raven parents were absent and an eagle began to circle. The eagle quickly swooped in, apparently knowing the ravens would return any instant. It landed on Bumblebee's hood, and peered almost quizzically into the nest. The raven chicks were unusually quiet, flattening as they recognized that this bird was not one of their parents.

When the eagle stretched down its head and reached into the nest, one of the chicks peeped and pecked it defiantly. The eagle pulled its head back briefly, but the chick had nothing but attitude with which to defend itself, and the eagle apparently saw this, and again reached into the nest.

Bumblebee shuddered internally with horror as one chick squealed. The eagle had picked up the chick in its beak, and dropped the chick on the roof. The eagle pinned the chick with one of its talons, but then looked up sharply, its keen eyes detecting the approach of the parent ravens.

With an angry-sounding hissing noise, the eagle took off, the chick gripped in its talons. The ravens quickly closed in, flying higher than the eagle and then diving in for a surprisingly coordinated strafing run. One raven swooped in first, pecking with its beak and grabbing at the eagle with its feet.

The eagle twisted its head around, but had no way of fighting back against something above it. It folded its wings briefly, dropping lower in the air, then flapped them desperately to alter its course, making a sharp turn to the right. The second raven now dove in, repeating the attack of the first, who climbed in the air, and swung in a wide arc, positioning for another attack.

In this way, the ravens chased the eagle across the desert, out of sight.

Much later, the two ravens returned, but neither was carrying the stolen chick. Each parent was carrying food which they gave to their greedy remaining offspring, who had been calling for food the entire time the adults were gone, as if they had totally forgotten the terror that had just occurred. It was evident the young had no concept of death, and no real feeling of object permanence, which meant that -in their minds- the eagle ceased to exist the moment they could no longer see or hear it, and so too did their missing sibling.

If the parents were sad about their lost chicks, they did not show this to their remaining young, whom they continued to feed without pause. However, in future they were more careful, and always there was at least one parent on or near the nest. The eagle returned many times, but always the ravens were there waiting for it, and it did not succeed in taking another chick.

Sad as it seemed, Bumblebee actually understood. You couldn't just stop when somebody died. You couldn't give up when one of your own was lost. You had to keep going. You had to, for the ones who remained, and those still to come. With a start, Bumblebee realized that he understood the ravens better than he had thought, and that perhaps he had more in common with organic lifeforms than he'd believed. In truth, he understood the eagle as well. He'd seen the ravens feeding their young. To the eagle, the raven chicks were just food, probably for its own young. It wasn't evil. It was just survival.

Bumblebee understood that too.


	7. Chapter 6

None of the other chicks died as nestlings.

They ate ravenously, cried piteously for more, stumbled about their nest on legs that sounded too long and bent for their bodies, stretching their heads high as if they wanted more than anything to reach out to the sky itself and pull it down to them since their wings were too feeble to carry them to it.

Bumblebee knew they had wings, partially because he had heard their clumsy attempts to flap, but mainly because he understood on an instinctive level now the bond between the adult ravens and the young ones. He understood them to be the same creatures, even though it boggled his mind just to think of what unseen machinery must be at work to change those little eggs into these fast-growing but still unseemly young specimens of raven kind.

Unconsciously, he had also learned to see the difference between one bird and another. He knew the ravens and the eagle by sight, and many more birds primarily by their cries, for few dared venture too close to the raven's nest, for fear of being attacked. It was a justified fear, for the ravens attacked almost anything that came too close for their comfort, save for other ravens, whom they allowed to perch surprisingly close by.

These ravens were younger, noisier than their elders but not so noisy as the nestlings themselves, and by all evidence unattached. Bumblebee did not yet know how or why organic creatures paired, but he had recognized the condition not only in the ravens, but in others as well. There was some kind of pair-bond that bound two animals to often seek closely one another's company, and to share in success and failure. Bumblebee did not know why this was so, only that it was, and that was enough.

What he did understand was the concept of young. Cybertronians themselves came online without the need for parents to protect them, for they were fully mentally and physically developed, and came to with some knowledge right from the beginning. But there was still Cybertronian youth, and their seniors often would take it upon themselves either singly or collectively to raise them, to try to instill a sense of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, a comprehension not of language but of history, an acquisition of skills beyond simply walking and talking.

Bumblebee did not realize it, but he had missed much of the formative experiences common to the Cybertronians who had come before him. By the time he had come along, there was no time for the young. When Bumblebee came online, there had only been war left. The only difference between young and old was the number of scars on the armor, and even that difference could be erased after a young bot's first time in combat, depending on how badly things went.

Still, there was within him the memory of a time when things were new, and when things which were now second-nature to him had been difficult. Transformation from one form to another didn't come innately, it required a certain amount of practice, and was initially done in very slow, gradual stages. But at least Bumblebee had begun with that ability. Implanted weaponry came even less naturally, for it was artificially introduced by Autobot medics, a necessity as the war had grown more desperate. What he remembered most clearly was trying to engage his weapons the first time. What a disaster that had been.

In fact, the young raven chicks reminded him a lot of those times as they fought to bridge the gap between nestling and fledgling, trying to get the strength and coordination to get out of their nest, driven by some almost suicidal impulse to escape confinement before they had wings to fly with. Perhaps ignorance was the gift of all young things, for if they knew what lay beyond their tiny, protected corner of the world, they would be too scared to ever face it.

Certainly Bumblebee found himself in the reality of war before he understood what it meant. He had killed before it had occurred to him what killing really was. It was strange to think you could do something without really knowing you were doing it, or understanding what it meant, but you could. Choices were made, and doors slipped shut behind you, and before you knew it... you were among the last of a dying race, fugitive from a dying planet, alone on an foreign world, staring out at an alien sky, with a flock of baby birds sitting on your hood, shouting and demanding their dinner.

What a strange thing existence was.

Finally, one day the strongest of the nestlings managed to clamber all the way up to the top of the nest, and cling to the rim of it. The chick was no longer the ugly, almost featherless thing Bumblebee had first seen it as. Though its body was still downy, it was covered in feathers, most of them black and glossy like those of its parents. The corners of its beak were paler, and its feathers rather unkempt, but it was recognizable as being the same kind of animal as its parents, instead of looking like a little organic scraplet. It wasn't graceful yet, but its legs were strong enough to support it now.

The nestling rasped its demand for food, but the parent birds had been lingering at a distance for longer and longer periods, as if trying to force the chicks to come to them for feeding. One of them was nearby, sitting on a spiny plant of some kind. Mindful of the thorns, the raven adjusted its stance, and called to its offspring, who bobbed its head and looked waveringly in the direction of its parent.

It looked down. It was a long way down, especially for something that had never flown before.

The chick wobbled uncertainly. Perhaps it would have hesitated longer, but its siblings were impatient to climb up and have a look around for themselves, and they pushed the chick right off the edge. The chick squealed as it fell, and for a moment Bumblebee thought he'd witnessed a murder. But then the chick spread its wings, flapped frantically a few times, and floated, clumsy but unhurt, down to the desert floor. The second chick was pushed by the third, who then was forced to follow or else stay in the nest _alone_.

The three fledglings never returned to the nest, but Bumblebee remained still for a few days, just in case they did. The chicks stayed in the area, not really able to fly yet, mostly just flopping around and jumping from place to place, their parents continuing to feed them during this period.

And then one day they took off, flew away, and didn't come back.

In truth, Bumblebee was relieved. Finally being able to move after his long, self-enforced imprisonment felt heavenly, though at first he had trouble doing it. Cybertronians lived long lives, but generally didn't spend days at a time of those lives sitting motionless. It took a little bit to get the kinks out.

Rather than destroy the nest, however, Bumblebee carefully transformed and laid it on the ground. He knew the ravens weren't coming back, but it still felt like the right thing to do.

After that, Bumblebee moved on, just as the ravens had.

It would not be the last time he found himself being used as a nest, not only by birds, but by small animals such as mice, and he frequently found himself being used as a lookout perch by predator and prey alike. But he would always remember the ravens most, because they had been the first, and because they had given him the opportunity to learn so much, not just about Earth, but himself, in forcing him to just _stop_ , to stop and just exist with them for awhile.

In their strange way, it felt as if they had welcomed him to their planet.

Perhaps they had. In the coming years, humans would begin to hotly debate the intelligence of animals, whether or not they had any and, if so, how much. What did animals perceive that humans did not? And then the questions would narrow down to grouping, then species, then individual. Bumblebee might have saved them a lot of time if ever those scientists had met him.

Long after, there would be, out in the desert, a flock of ravens that would land on him whenever he came into their area, and follow him when he drove through. Even once there were roads with many vehicles, still the ravens remembered. Somehow, they passed down through untold generations something about the yellow and black car.

Bumblebee never wondered if they realized he was alive. He never wondered if they followed him out of puzzlement at this strange nest site of generations before that somehow moved. He never wondered, because it didn't really matter to him. What mattered to him in the future was the reminder that, no matter how many people he fooled with his vehicle disguise, there would always be ravens who knew.

* * *

In the time that followed, Bumblebee started to recognize the patterns of the world. The seasons were predicted not only by the changes in the air, but everywhere. Plants and animals responded not just to a coming rain, but a change of season. The fur and feathers animals wore got thicker before the cool of fall arrived to warn of the ice of winter heading down from the north. Some plants bloomed in anticipation of the spring while frost still lay on the ground. Many herbivores had their offspring before the rains, anticipating the coming new grass. All the living things of Earth seemed to be in tune with the seasonal shifts, and Bumblebee learned to be so as well.

His ability to measure time, when he chose to, was all but infallible. He could of course feel temperatures rising and dropping, and the change of air pressure before a storm. Still, he did get struck by lightning at least once before he learned to avoid it. Lightning didn't really do any serious damage to him, but it definitely startled him and upset his internal systems for awhile. Avoid being hit by lightning repeatedly, was the advice in his report, as repeated exposure to the unpredictable and unrestrained electrical current could potentially cause severe system damage.

In fact, there were a lot of dangerous things on Earth. Not the creatures on it, those were harmless and even helpless, though one could wind up in danger from a clumsy attempt to avoid being noticed by them. But the weather... that was an unexpected wrinkle.

The blazing sun could, over years of exposure, begin to degrade the outside of a Cybertronian, not only fading and cracking a paint-job, but also by heating internal systems excessively. Short-term damage was not a concern, but over time even the armor of a Warrior would begin to weaken under the intense glare of the sun if care wasn't taken. And certainly it could be bad for energon, particularly the refined kind that Cybertronians used for powering systems.

Cold in winter was less of a problem than the wet. Cybertronians could survive for a period of time in space if they were properly equipped, but that cold did not come with moisture. It was the snow and ice that slipped in through the chinks in armor that started to do the real damage, especially if the water managed to reach a system that required a certain amount of surrounding warmth in order to run. Once those systems began to be corrupted, a Cybertronian didn't have much time before irreversible damage was done, possibly even a critical system failure that would cause a shutdown. If not removed from the cold shortly thereafter, a Cybertronian in that condition could die.

Wind could cause minimal damage, but more importantly it could carry debris that could dent or scratch, not only causing minor damage and potentially working its way in to more vital areas, but also leaving openings for other types of weather to do more damage than they would otherwise.

The rain was bad because of the water, especially once the sun had done its dastardly work on the paint, allowing the moisture to reach metal and begin to rust it. But far worse was the humidity, specifically when it reached such a fever pitch that there was mist or fog, because then the water didn't just flow down from the sky, it seemed to float everywhere, working its way in anywhere. Prolonged exposure to those conditions would be lethal, and recovering from damage done by rust was no minor matter.

Regardless of how careful Bumblebee was, he had not come equipped for this type of hardship. He had no supplies to repair or replace anything that became damaged, and so each minor scratch made him that much more vulnerable. Eventually, if no supplies were sent from Cybertron, he would simply cease to function, and this before energon depletion got him.

And still there was no word from the Autobots.


	8. Chapter 7

At first, humans had very little impact on Bumblebee's life. In fact, he was only peripherally aware of them, as something to avoid disturbing, which he quickly learned meant avoiding them entirely. To start with, it was enough for them simply not to see him, but eventually they became concerned with suspicious sounds beyond sight, and finally they started to concern themselves with any tracks he left.

All of these were things Bumblebee knew how to conceal. He'd gotten out of the habit during his time on Earth, but it was an easy one to fall back into. What was a little more difficult was the fact that the ground of Earth did leave such clear impressions, almost no matter where he stood or how carefully he moved. Cybertron had roads, in fact it was almost entirely roads, and so not leaving tracks behind was primarily difficult in city ruins, or other places were the rubble had become a fine dust that left clear imprints. On Earth, that dust was everywhere, covering everything.

That was one of the many strange things about Earth. Where there was life, there was also death, and the Earth, Bumblebee had learned, was covered in it. The dirt which composed so much of the surface, and the sand which covered even more of it, was in part made from decomposing plants and animals after they died. Bumblebee had suspected that from the first, but careful personal analysis conducted over many sites over a period of time (much longer than a real scientist would have taken) had confirmed the theory. When life ended, the matter which had contained and carried its essence was returned to the Earth. From what Bumblebee could tell, this was food for the plants, and perhaps some animals even, he wasn't sure. It seemed that life fed on life, something had to die for there to be life, even on the most fundamental organic level. To Bumblebee, the concept was quite bizarre.

Perhaps a more thoughtful individual might have tried to see some connection between the longevity of Cybertronians combined with their slowed and finally halted production rate and the death of their world, but such notions did not occur to Bumblebee. He had other, more relevant, concerns.

Bumblebee recognized immediately the sentience of humanity, knew that here was the species to which the Earth belonged, the one he had been ordered not to disturb, and which he knew he must protect at any cost should the Decepticons come to threaten it as a result of Autobot presence here. Here was the race he must not hinder or interfere with.

It was surprisingly easy to avoid them. Their senses were quite dull, even in comparison with other Earth creatures, and their technology was so primitive that Bumblebee couldn't even recognize it as tech. In the long memory of Cybertronians, even the most advanced projectile weapons were so ancient as to be almost forgotten. Anything more primitive was unrecognizable to any but the most ardent historian, and even then much of Cybertronian history was buried by time and war, and not much was known about how they had come to be as they were now.

For the time being, humans held little interest for him. In fact, until they started developing vehicles whose form he could take (not to mention the advent of TV shows -most particularly cartoons- and video games), which would allow him and other Cybertronians to observe humans for prolonged periods up close, they would not intrigue him greatly. He would later look back on that early indifference on his part with surprise and not a little shock.

His reports on humans were as detailed as his reports on anything, but not more so. In fact, anyone reading between the lines could easily detect a certain annoyance at the inconvenience they caused him in his travels. A close enough look at those reports showed a certain dislike for Earth, or at the very least a discomfort with it. He had seen wonders, yes, and there was much to be learned, but overall he missed home, and everything about Earth being so different only made him feel that separation more keenly. His reports were never complaining or bitter, mostly they were factual, and naturally the primary things he reported on were potential hazards or threats because those were the things that the Autobots needed to know about and be prepared for.

Bumblebee was aware, of course, of the fact that a huge percentage of Earth was covered in water. In fact, that was something he'd been counting on. Bumblebee had purposely been aimed at the large landmass that seemed to have the fewest humans, and the most open ground. It had been assumed that humans couldn't cross that deadly expanse of water. Bumblebee now knew they actually consumed the stuff on a regular basis, and bathed in it. More bizarrely, his attention had been drawn to the fact that there were live things in bodies of water. Now it wouldn't have surprised him if humans crossed large water bodies with some regularity.

But knowing there were oceans and actually seeing one first-hand were two different things.

At first he only heard the sound, and did not recognize it for what it was. He had heard the sloshing of water before, the way it lapped at the edges of lakes, and roared as it rushed in rivers. He had even heard oceans before, but not ones made of water. But water ocean was something new to him. He didn't know for sure what he was coming upon until he topped a small dune of near-white sand, much paler and finer than that which he had encountered in his first desert, though not as white as what he'd found when he encountered what he believed to be his second. The dunes here were fewer, and lower than what he'd seen in the white desert, and there were none of the rock formations that had marked his first.

It was then that he understood the slow, never-quite-ending roll of seemingly ground-based thunder that he'd been hearing for some time. It had been that sound which had drawn him in, by mere curiosity, and by the very real need to know.

There were few things on Earth, very few, that were large by Bumblebee's context for the word. Even massive Redwoods were not much taller than him in robot form, and there were no other contenders with regards to trees. Given relatively level ground and a slightly elevated position, Bumblebee's vision was clear enough to see for miles. Even in the middle of the desert, he was aware of its edge at the far reaches of his vision.

But the ocean dwarfed him, and everything he'd known. It was bigger than any single thing on Cybertron, though by how much Bumblebee didn't know, because he could not see where it ended. The way the waves rolled in towards the shore, then pulled back was immediately recognizable as a kind of pulse, as of energon in the veins, carried by the beat of a spark. The water acted _alive_.

 _{By the Allspark..._ } Bumblebee burred quietly to himself, unaware of how rough his long-disused voice sounded, not even truly conscious of having spoken at all.

Even once he had ascertained the pattern with which the ocean swelled and withdrew, he still could not coerce himself into moving towards it. It was not only a thing alive, but a thing of very real, immense power. Bumblebee had thought he was long over the irrational fear that water might leap beyond its banks and bite him, but he felt wary of approaching _this_ water.

The ocean was an ancient force of nature, Bumblebee could feel it. It tugged at something inside him, quietly beckoning him towards doom, not out of any malevolent purpose, but simply because it existed, and this was its way, a way which knew neither good nor evil, a life that ebbed and flowed in response to unseen forces, unknown and perhaps unknowable, an eternal leviathan.

With fearful fascination, he realized that there was no way to prepare the Autobots for this. The words for it, for what it truly was, what it represented... not only didn't he know those words, he felt certain such words did not even exist, perhaps could not ever exist. Bumblebee felt the roaring in his ears more than heard it, felt the thunder of the ocean's heart under his tires. His spark pounded in him, with a disorienting combination of awe, adoration and sheer, unadulterated terror. He wanted to stay where he was, move towards the ocean and run from it without ever looking back all at the same time. He had no concept of how he could possibly describe this in a report, either coherently or realistically.

Deep inside, Bumblebee felt a crack trying to break its way across his mind, an insane desire to rush towards a state of denial. To deny the sea its power, to deny it existed at all. It was too terrible, too awful, too awesome to be comprehended or accepted, making the only course that of flight.

Intellectually, he knew the ocean could not chase him. It could not attack him. Even the flicks of salty wetness that struck him would only do him harm over time, if he stayed here for a long time, or failed to dislodge them. But something deeper than intellect was at work. He recognized the same trembling panic that had taken him during his first thunderstorm, but this was beyond that. He felt in him the same horrified fear that had taken hold during his first moments on Earth, but this was beyond that. This went deeper, touching on some primitive nature he had heretofore been unaware was part of him.

A rational part of his mind knew he was coming unraveled, knew he had to do something before he was undone completely, but that was only a faint, desperate whisper beneath the screaming in his head to run, to not move, to go to the ocean, to simply let himself drown, both literally and figuratively.

What shocked him from the strange paralysis was actually a gull. The big white bird called, swooping up from behind and planting itself on Bumblebee's roof. It had retrieved something from the ocean to eat, and now snapped that up in a few decisive gulps. Then it set to preening, before nonchalantly flying off towards the ocean, dipping into that fathoms deep mystery, and coming out again unharmed.

Balance restored, Bumblebee turned and drove parallel to the ocean for awhile, not daring to get closer, but preventing himself from fleeing. He told himself not to pretend, but he did anyway, that he was doing it to see how far the ocean went. He knew the answer already. Each land mass was ultimately surrounded by it. He knew that. Yet still he drove along, for uncounted time, letting the fear subside, letting the horror bleed off, letting his overwhelmed awe become simple respect.

Before he was able to finally turn away from the ocean, he received another shock, one that almost sent him into another, even more devastating spin.

It was a message from Cybertron, instructing him to locate and mark potential energon cache sites, and landing zones. Bumblebee's solitary existence on this alien world was coming to an end. The Autobots were coming to Earth.


	9. Chapter 8

**Part 2 – To Hell on Earth**

" _Ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it."  
-_ _ **Phantoms**_ **(Dean Koontz)**

* * *

"What in..." began one Autobot as another exclaimed, "Great Cybertron!"

The Scout stirred from his doze. The new unit of Autobots sent to Earth had made it through their first week, nervously and with much complaint. The posted sentry hadn't picked up on the change in the air or -if he had- he'd failed to realize what it implied. Bumblebee looked around, but he'd grown so used to the weather of Earth over the last five years (a meaningless number told to him by his new CO) that he didn't at first understand what all the fuss was about.

"It's like a cloud of smoke, only wet!" cried one of them whose name Bumblebee hadn't yet seen fit to learn, flinching away from the dampness, though it was a futile gesture as the wet was quite literally everywhere.

Bumblebee could already feel that the rust prevention measures the Autobot scientists had developed weren't as effective as anticipated or desired. But he knew that they were far better than nothing. For reasons he didn't know or care about, not one of the Autobots who'd arrived was a medic, so there was nobody with the supplies or knowledge to undo whatever damage Bumblebee had sustained, but there had come with these bots a number of items to reduce any future damage.

It was clear, however, that certain portions of his reports had been lost, ignored, misinterpreted or at least not passed on to the grunts going into the field. Or perhaps these bots simply hadn't believed their audio receivers when they were told about all the ways water might come at them.

 _{It's only fog,}_ Bumblebee supplied casually, _{It's normal.}_

"You might have warned us," Axle, his new CO, snapped.

 _{I did!}_ Bumblebee snarled right back.

"Do not take that tone with your commanding officer!" yelled a Warrior.

 _{I'll take any tone I like!}_ Bumblebee shot back without hesitation, _{I will not be blamed for things which are not_ _my fault! And_ **fog** _is_ _ **not**_ _my fault! I am not responsible for the weather!}_

"Calm down!" Axle broke in, "The both of you! Bumblebee, you're out of line. I've cut you slack because you've been here longer than the rest of us, which means you've suffered more and also have knowledge of the area. But I draw the line at insubordination. And Throttle, I can defend myself. Now look, we're tired, wet and miserable, but we're in this together so we should make the best of it. Our enemy is the Decepticons, not each other."

"Pardon me, sir," interrupted a Warrior, younger than the one Axle had referred to as Throttle, "But the Decepticons are light-years away. It's not likely they'll ever come here, or that we'll ever get another shot at them. We're glorified security guards."

"And what purpose do you suppose security guards serve?" Axle asked pointedly.

These Autobots were actually a kind of advanced guard. They had brought some energon with them, but primarily their purpose was to make sure the way was clear for those who would follow.

They were a heavily armed company whose main purpose would be to defend Earth, and in particular the energon caches once they were put in place, against any and all Decepticon threats. Their training and function here was not only to fight against the Decepticons, but potentially to do it against overwhelming numbers. Their ranks were swollen by Autobots trained in the sciences, primarily research and development, sent to make sense of Bumblebee's reports, and to provide detailed answers to questions of those still on Cybertron, who were in the process of designing technologies for this new terrain, and conducting accelerated training courses for bots on the verge of being deployed to Earth.

Bumblebee was the Scout, his years here were nothing more than a first impression for the Autobots. He didn't resent that. There was a lot of stuff he didn't know, didn't understand and didn't care to. He'd admitted as much in his reports. And anyway, the fact was that he was tired. It was a relief to have other bots here, taking over. And it was even more of one to finally have a clear objective again.

But the reunion with his kind was not what he'd hoped it would be.

He'd been a Scout in the field for so long that he wasn't even sure how to connect with other beings anymore. Damage sustained and years on Earth had not exactly helped matters. Worse, they'd brought out an anger in him that he hadn't realized had been lying dormant inside for years. The anger didn't seem to have a direction, and he didn't know its cause, but its slow burn had made it powerful, and Bumblebee found himself lashing out before he even knew it was happening.

These bots were stranger to him than the fog, and he couldn't feel comfortable around them.

 _Am I a Rogue?_ Bumblebee wondered.

He didn't feel especially treacherous. It wasn't that he didn't feel loyal to the Autobots, or that he had thoughts of abandoning the war, or that he had any love for Decepticons. None of that had changed. It was more like he'd had a list of things that made up his opinions and governed his behaviors, and suddenly there was something new there, that bumped the positioning of everything else down a notch.

Only... he didn't know what that something was. No, to be more accurate, he didn't _want_ to know.

The war had changed him, and now Earth had changed him too. What he didn't know was exactly what had changed. He didn't know who he was anymore. And that scared him. That fear, he realized, was what had made him angry. But knowing that didn't seem to make it any more manageable.

He realized the discussion had gone on without him. That happened a lot. Before Earth, he had sometimes lost interest or purposely stopped paying attention to a conversation which seemed to have no relevance, but now he would wax thoughtful and reflective without realizing it, losing seconds or even minutes of time by his inattention. It disturbed him, but did not greatly distress him. He had been through too much for such minor ticks to upset him to any significant degree. It was just a new fact of his existence, like his mangled voice box, or his water damaged T-cog that rendered transformation slower and noisier than it ought to have been. Perhaps the rust had got to his brain. He didn't know, but he also couldn't do anything about it, so he merely accepted it.

Vaguely he wondered if the bots who'd chosen the soldiers for this mission had neglected to send a medic out of stupidity, ignorance, misguided optimism, or something worse... like maybe there weren't enough medics left to go around. Decepticons made targets of medics because they knew that taking out one medic weakened the Autobot army more than killing twenty Warriors. Medics by necessity were excellent fighters, particularly in close combat, because Decepticon assassins tended to come at them in their medical tents while they worked. But medics were not front line fighters, and were guarded as well as the Autobots could manage. If there were so few of them that not even one could be spared for this far-flung, dangerous mission to Earth... then things were as bad back home as Bumblebee had feared in his darker moments.

"Nobody said anything about Earth scraplets," a Warrior was complaining, "I dunno what these bugs are doin', but it don't feel right."

Bumblebee decided to say nothing. He had reported on the plethora of nesting animals in as much detail as he was able. But those reports probably hadn't been seen by these bots. They were just grunts, there were things the higher ups decided they 'didn't need to know'. Or forgot that they needed to know. It was easy to gloss over the nesting habits of organics when you were faced with the horrors of falling water, rising water, sand storms and various other things which were equally dangerous and/or painful.

The 'Earth scraplets' were mosquitoes. The Autobots had noticed that they sucked the lifeblood from other organics, though they were harmless to Cybertronians. They also loved water, it was where they laid their eggs. Bumblebee had failed to even notice them in his first year on Earth. They were so small, and there were so many other organics, the likes of which Bumblebee had never seen nor heard of.

"Let them be," Axle said unnecessarily, "They can't hurt you, your weapons or the energon we're guarding, so they're to be ignored and harmed as little as possible."

Bumblebee was relieved by the updated orders. He'd been terrified of being punished for not having avoided harming any lifeforms whatsoever. But the reality of the Earth situation had sunk into someone's consciousness. Destruction on some level was literally unavoidable.

"We weren't meant for this," the Warrior grumbled, "Everything on this planet goes 'squish' too easily. And it's all so tiny. It's unreasonable to expect us to notice every bug we step on."

"Not all of them are bugs," a scientist corrected him.

"Yeah? Then what are they?" the Warrior asked.

"Unclassified. But certainly they are nothing like insecticons or scraplets."

Bumblebee wasn't so sure of that, but then again he wasn't a scientist.

This particular researcher was an excitable type, energetic in an annoying kind of way. Obviously new to the field, he was high on energon, and low on experience. Soldiers in the field often went without, running on minimal internal reserves of energon because transporting it took time, and was a risky business. Even when they had energon provided, there was never enough to go around. Not anymore.

But for those who had worked behind walls, well within secured Autobot territory, the pinch of the energon shortage wasn't really felt. It wasn't cruelty on the part of the Autobot army, but practicality. It wasn't just that it was easier, faster and safer to transport energon to secure locations; it was that the transports more often reached their destination in the first place. It was simply a fact of reality that they all faced.

The upshot of this was that Bumblebee and the others were long-used to conserving what little they had. The researcher had enough extra energon to be lively and annoying, and had no practice doing without. Nobody bothered him about it, it was the kind of thing you had to learn for yourself. Way out here on Earth, where their duty was to cache and defend energon and avoid using it whenever possible, he was going to get a crash course in it fairly shortly.

In the meantime, he was annoyance Axle was willing to tolerate, and therefore the other Warriors also tolerated. Bumblebee was quietly amused, partly because he remembered having so much energy. In fact, he was young enough that, with a little more energon than he had, he could be nearly that lively.

"I, for one, relish the historical opportunities presented by this world," the researcher commented, and Bumblebee realized the conversation had once more moved on without him.

"Here we go," Throttle rolled his eyes.

"This is a chance we never could have expected. The opportunity to see history made, to witness how things must have been on Cybertron eons before the Autobots and Decepticons were a distant idea."

"They're _organics_ ," Throttle reminded him harshly, "What could they possibly have in common with us?"

"Oh a lot," the researcher persisted, "A lot."

"Jax," Axle said, "How would you know? You haven't even seen a human yet."

"I read the reports," Jax replied sensibly, "And history was a sort of... hobby of mine. Before."

Bumblebee perked up a little. At least _someone_ had read his reports.

"Anyway, study of humans is part of my job here," Jax continued, "The Scout did the best he could with what he had, but there's things I know that he doesn't, questions I can answer because of that, given the opportunity to observe them."

"Yes, yes, we all know you're excited about humans," Throttle spat, "It's just some of us aren't so keen on 'em."

Tension rippled through Bumblebee. It wasn't a threat against humanity, but it sure had the makings of one. With a twitch of his head, Bumblebee gauged how difficult it would be to take Throttle down, or maybe even out. Throttle was no easy target. He was a big bruiser, twice Bumblebee's size. But he was not slow of mind or body. Bumblebee hoped he'd never have to find out if he could take him.

But the simple fact of the matter was that when he'd received the message telling him there would be Autobots coming, his orders were somewhat revised. It was his job to protect humans, and to prevent interference with them, from Decepticons or Autobots. By any means necessary.

"Settle," Axle growled, evidently not liking the look he saw in Bumblebee's eyes, "Scout, is there any way out of this wet?"

 _{No,}_ Bumblebee said, _{Fog gets everywhere, there is no escape. It should disappear in awhile.}_

"In awhile?" Throttle asked, "What's that mean?"

"He's talking about evaporation," Jax replied evenly, "When the Earth's sun gets higher in the sky, it'll start to burn off the water. It'll turn into steam then, and float off."

 _{Sort of,} Bumblebee amended._

"Sort of," Jax said agreeably.

"Well," Throttle grunted sarcastically, "I don't know 'bout anybody else, but I feel reassured."

Ignoring him, Jax turned to Bumblebee, "I'd like to see the humans. Can you take me to them?"

Bumblebee didn't move for an extended moment. He looked to his new CO at last. He'd been a loner for a long time, far longer than he'd been on Earth. But he realized that, as a soldier, he must be bound by the laws that governed those of his ilk. It startled him that he actually _wanted_ to show Jax the humans, to explain all he'd learned to someone who could share his enthusiasm and perplexed amusement at the antics of the small, fragile, but very fierce creatures of Earth.

At a nod from Axle, Bumblebee turned and headed off. Axle stayed to supervise the concealment of the energon they had brought with them. He figured the Scout had lived here long enough on his own to take care of himself. And hopefully Jax as well.


	10. Chapter 9

"Do you realize, do you have any clue at all, any idea, any concept of what we're looking at?" the words tumbled out of Jax's mouth, "Any notion or inkling?"

Bumblebee didn't respond. They were close to the human settlement, and he had little control over the volume of his voice. He wished silently that Jax would display a little more control of his own. They didn't want to be noticed by the humans, who were camped near a river.

Jax fidgeted while Bumblebee gazed at the humans, not sure what he was expected to see. He noticed several retrieving water from the river. Pieces of animals and plants made up the majority of their tools and shelters, though rocks came into play at baffling times and in befuddling ways. The concept of throwing rocks was so far back in Cybertronian history that Bumblebee had never even heard of it.

"We're seeing prehistory!" Jax exclaimed, shaking Bumblebee by the shoulder.

Bumblebee disentangled himself from his exuberant companion. He wasn't accustomed to being mauled by those on his own side. Actually, he'd grown used to being alone, and _quiet_. He wasn't sure how to respond to Jax, or what Jax was actually talking about.

"History barely records weapons that aren't installed by a mechanic," Jax gestured to Bumblebee's arm.

Beneath the armored shell lay the blaster he'd possessed for almost as long as he'd been in military service. He'd taken good care of his weapon, and never had to replace any part of it. He sometimes forgot that it hadn't always been a piece of him.

"There was a time when we built weapons and had to carry them by hand."

Bumblebee followed that far. He knew that. Jax might think it a thing of the past, but Bumblebee had actually seen it before. Archaic as the concept seemed, those weapons were sometimes pretty effective, though never as much as an installed blaster or blade. The fine control and awareness of the weapon that was inherent to it being a part of you was more than a match for any separate weapon. Bumblebee's blasters were a true extension of himself.

"But I never thought... I mean, energon based weapons have been the core of our military and civilian technology for as long as recorded history," that much, at least, was true, "But these creatures... they haven't even discovered the atom yet. And that's just _basic science_. Why, they've got projectile weaponry! Who ever heard of such a thing?"

Bumblebee tilted his head, taking in the various weaponry in the camp anew. Projectile weapons? What did that mean? And what significance did it have? Had Cybertronians once been like this? He couldn't see how, though part of him wanted to believe it. After all, there was a critical difference between bots and men. Humans were organic. Their world was organic. It was different. It always would be.

That was good, right?

Bumblebee shook his head. He was a soldier, not a scientist or philosopher. Jax was the expert in these matters. And if he thought that using devices to throw objects at fleeing animals was historically significant, who was Bumblebee to argue with him?

"Projectile weapons," Jax laughed, "Of course. It's obvious, once you think about it. Naturally that would have been what came prior to blasters. I wonder if there was an intermediate step... I mean, that's a pretty huge gap to leap, technologically speaking. But sometimes big leaps happen if you have a genius at work, or a spectacular accident that leads to research. Ha, they're just like us!"

Bumblebee stiffened instinctively. The last time he'd heard that, the sentence had been spoken by an Autobot in reference to Decepticons. In the end, he'd had to shoot that bot in the spark himself. But this was different. These were humans, not Decepticons. It was different. Still, he looked on the humans with new wariness. They were primitive now, but one day... one day. If Jax was right, it was only a matter of time. He felt a tremor run through him as he filed away that information. It was a dangerous thought he'd just had. Perhaps someday it would be valid, but not now. Right now, the humans were harmless, fragile, easily crushed. Right now, he had standing orders not to harm them, nor to let harm come to them as a result of the Cybertronian war. They were not the enemy. Not now.

 _And what of Jax?_

Jax made him uneasy. He was too enthralled by humanity, too inexperienced, too unpredictable. But Jax also reminded him of a part of himself he'd left behind long ago, and only started to rediscover here on Earth. That part of him that had fun, that could be excited, that was really alive. That part of him had been suppressed, because it was not conducive to survival in a war zone. But out here... well... maybe it was okay to be a bit enthusiastic about the extraordinary.

"And you said, in your reports, they actually... consume that liquid chemical substance?" Jax asked, gesturing towards where some humans appeared to be gathering water.

Bumblebee said nothing. Humans would immerse themselves in water. They drank it by the gallon. They gave it to the animals they tethered, and put it in pots with meat and plant materials which they then consumed. As far as Bumblebee was able to guess, it was either their lifeblood, or a key component of it. And not just humans, but all organic creatures on Earth. Considering the percentage of Earth that was water, it made sense. The water would either kill you or you would learn how to use it to your advantage. With so much water all over the planet, even in its driest parts, there really was no other choice.

Bumblebee wondered if perhaps energon had once flowed on Cybertron like water on Earth. Had it ever rained from the sky? Had there ever been plenty for all? He wondered.

But these were idle questions. He had neither the knowledge nor the experience to answer them, or to even compose a theory. Besides, Cybertron and Earth had little in common. Though if Jax was right, maybe Cybertron had once been like Earth. The Cybertron Bumblebee knew had been a dying world. This world, Earth, it was very much alive.

"Do you like it here?" Jax inquired suddenly.

Bumblebee didn't answer. He'd never really thought about it. True, he had noted the differences between Earth and Cybertron, and he had been both excited and frightened by how very alive Earth was, and there were many things about Earth he had learned to love (though many more he had learned only to tolerate). But did he actually _like_ being on Earth? He wasn't sure how to answer that, mainly because he wasn't sure he knew the answer. So he said nothing. He was good at that.

"Oh come on," Jax persisted, "You're not like those others, I can tell. You're not stuffy like Axle or high-handed like Throttle, even if you try to pretend to be. You've got the spark of an explorer. You've still got feelings underneath that armor plating. You're still alive inside."

This startled Bumblebee. He didn't realize he'd been giving off any kind of vibe. He knew there was a gulf between himself and the other Autobots, but he was skeptical that Jax was correct as to what was causing that distance. Certainly he did not feel particularly close to Jax either. They didn't have much in common, and so far he'd spent most of his time wishing Jax was a little more careful. And a lot quieter.

Finally, mostly to get Jax off his back, Bumblebee shrugged.

"A shrug? That's all you've got?" Jax demanded, "Five years on an alien world, and you give me _a shrug?_ Come on, I've read enough of your reports to know there's a lot you aren't saying."

Bumblebee just sort of looked at him, offering nothing else.

"Okay, okay," Jax backed off, "If it's all you've got, it's all you've got. But I'm telling you right now, I know there's more to you than what you let the others see. You're not just a Scout. Not anymore. Your time here on Earth has made you into something more, even if you weren't before."

Again Bumblebee could offer him nothing. Nothing but silence.

* * *

Over time, Jax seemed to grow used to Bumblebee's silence. He filled that silence with an endless chatter that Bumblebee at first found irritating, but then gradually got used to and even found a certain kind of companionable comfort in. He didn't need to say anything, because Jax said it all, every trivial insight, random theory or stupid thought that came into his head.

They were together a lot, because Jax had a way of ticking off the Warriors every chance he got. Axle sent him out to conduct his research, and Bumblebee went along as guide (and also to keep Jax out of trouble). It was easier dealing with Jax than it was dealing with a lot of bots at once. Besides, all the Warriors looked at Bumblebee as something less, or at least something... _other_.

Not just because he was a Scout, or because he was damaged, but because something had happened to him on Earth, something he couldn't explain or describe, but which was plain for all to see somehow. And this in addition to his experiences as a Scout, which had trained him never to get too close, never to learn the faces or the names of the soldiers he would probably have to leave behind when duty called him to run, to gather intel, or to deliver that intel from Point A to Point B without delay or regard for what might be happening between here and there. It had all combined to create a distance between himself and the Warriors which was insurmountable.

Jax was nothing at all like Bumblebee, but he was even less like the Warriors.

Not that Jax was particularly interested in making new friends most of the time anyway. His primary interests were research, scientific study (which was different for reasons Bumblebee was unable to grasp), and writing reports to send back to colleagues on Cybertron. When he wasn't doing any of that, he was generally harassing the Warriors, who could not possibly have been any less interested in the things he was studying if they'd tried and, unlike Bumblebee, were not inclined to be silent about it.

As for Bumblebee, he was sometimes sent to scout areas assigned to him by Axle, but he never really knew if they were potential cache sites, landing sites, or something else entirely. Axle didn't tell him much, probably because it didn't occur to him. Likewise, it didn't occur to Bumblebee to ask. It was a holdover from Cybertron.

The less the Scout knew about why he was doing something, the less he could tell the enemy if he was captured. He needed to know just enough to acquire the correct intel and make sure it got back to the party that needed it. There were no Decepticons here, but long military habit was hard to break, and neither Axle nor Bumblebee saw any particular reason to try.

More Autobots arrived from time to time, though most of them did not stay. They were merely transporting supplies and energon, as well as delivering news. It seemed both sides were caching energon off-world now. There was only one Prime left now, the one Bumblebee knew. A minor, low-ranking Decepticon had wrecked havoc on a base, going on a destructive rampage before finally being captured and locked into stasis. Speaking of wrecking things, the Wreckers were doing a real job on some Decepticon outpost, or so said the reports. More news, all of it distant, and Bumblebee filed it away only because it was his habit to do so.

It was amazing how irrelevant it all felt this far away from the war zone.

* * *

 _Cybertron_

"I don't like asking it of you, old friend, but I'm afraid I see no alternative."

"Really... Optimus, Earth? You can't be serious. I'm a medic, what do I know of _organic_ life?"

Optimus shook his head wearily. He could not argue that point. But he also saw in Axle's report that the Autobots were ill-equipped to handle Earth. Obviously, the reports of Bumblebee hadn't been enough to go on. He did not blame the Scout, he could see from the reports that Bumblebee was attempting to describe things he had no experience with. It had been folly to think it would be enough.

"These Autobots are Warriors, fighters. They know nothing of medicine. Ratchet... you and I both knew this was inevitable. You are the best -and one of the only medics- we have left. You know too much to be lost now."

"And so you're sending me to this alien world we know nothing about," Ratchet huffed.

"Here, read this," Optimus handed Ratchet a report.

"What is it?" Ratchet asked, holding it like it might be toxic.

"I sent our Earth Scout a message just before the first squad left for there. I was, and still am, concerned that those sent to Earth might have difficulty adjusting. The world is strange, and so far removed from our own and the war these soldiers are trained to fight that I fear damage to this world that is not our own may be inevitable. From our Scout's description, the Earth is fragile, which matches our initial intel scans. Cybertronians are far more powerful than anything the planet has to offer, and it would be all too easy to crush the lifeforms to which the planet belongs."

Ratchet cocked his head, but did not formulate a response. He had been in the field at the time the Scout was sent out, and had only just returned. He was wholly in the dark about Earth and absolutely everything to do with it.

"I gave the Scout instructions. Really it was more of a question. I asked him to defend Earth. If any of his fellow Autobots intentionally caused harm to any part of it, he was to stop them by any means necessary. I don't like giving orders of that nature, as you well know. But there is no telling how Autobots may react to having power where before they had little or none."

"Power corrupts," Ratchet muttered, now skimming the Scout's response to Optimus' orders.

"Indeed, old friend," Optimus said, "And our Scout is the only one who has been on Earth long enough to be hesitantly trusted. And too, there has been a shift in the nature of his reports. It was apparent from the first that he despised the world. But something has changed. His response exemplifies that."

A chill ran through Ratchet when he saw the name attached to the report. He hadn't known until precisely that moment that the Scout on Earth was the same one he had treated in the field, the same one he had failed. The Scout had lived, but Ratchet had been unable to repair him. He hadn't the skill, nor did he have the time. He'd saved the Scout's life, and then been forced to abandon him in favor of another patient. He could have done better. Should have... he shook his head. This was no time for regrets.

"When do I leave?" he asked quietly.

"As soon as possible," Optimus responded, "I fear it may not be long before the Autobots on Earth are in dire need of your medical expertise."

"Because of the weather?" Ratchet inquired, baffled.

"Because of the Decepticons," Optimus corrected, "Make no mistake, Ratchet; they are headed for Earth, even as we speak."


	11. Chapter 10

Though not explicitly stated in the reports, it was obvious to those with the experience to know that things were not going well on Cybertron. Bumblebee had read enough dispatches from bases about to be overrun or destroyed to recognize the choice of words.

Cybertron was not only dying, she was nearly lost.

Evacuations were underway all over the planet, ships were being sent out in their hundreds, carrying energon, soldiers, POWs, advanced weaponry, historical records, prototypes and scientific research notes. They were scattering to the stars, to the remote outposts and far-flung planets where the Autobots would be making their final stands. The plan was as ancient and simple as it was effective. The Decepticons could only closely pursue so many ships. They could only take over so many outposts. They could only locate so many hidden planets.

The war for Cybertron was now one for the galaxy... for more than one galaxy, in fact. Unfortunately, even as the Autobots fled and the Decepticons pursued, Megatron was wise enough to be planning ahead. Undoubtedly he too had secret bases, and hiding places for the energon the Decepticons had, and for any they managed to steal from the Autobots.

Already both sides had many and secret facilities where they conducted scientific research. Of course, the Decepticons had more secret camps for POWs, because they had less tendency to try to retrieve their own, so the Autobots didn't have to go to such extensive lengths to secure such locations. It would be nice to say that this was because Autobots treated their prisoners better than the Decepticons did, but the reality was simply that -with a few jarring exceptions- Decepticons didn't care about their own. The difficulty was in keeping the prisoners in, rather than keeping rescuers out.

Back on Cybertron, it had more than once been Bumblebee's job, as a Scout, to seek out such locations and report back, though a few times he had been sent in either alone or with Warriors backing him, to derail a particularly nasty operation of that type. He'd seldom been sent farther than that, however. But it seemed that was over now, all of it left in the past.

As Bumblebee read it, the world was lost, but the war was far from over.

It did not come as a surprise to him. He had known that it was coming long before that day when the Prime had called him in, and given him his assignment to Earth. Even so, it struck like a blow.

But it did not hit Bumblebee so hard as it hit Axle, and any others wise enough to read between the lines. They had known the war was grim, knew casualties were suffered often, knew the battlefields were stained with energon spilled upon the broken husks of former cities. Many of them were old enough to remember a time before. But they hadn't _really_ known the worst. Now, even without being told in so many words, they understood. Cybertron -their home- was dead.

And then there was Jax. Older than Bumblebee, he was nonetheless far less experienced in the field. The reports that came in seemed to mean nothing to him, and he obliviously continued his research, asking only when certain supplies were due and if any of his colleagues had sent responses to his first notes. He seemed disappointed that they had not, and somewhat surprised. The rest of them imagined that these colleagues were likely too busy evacuating to write correspondence.

Finally, one day, Throttle had had it.

Throttle wasn't the most grizzled of veterans, but he'd seen his share of combat, and he particularly resented that everyone else was doing something he could perceive as useful, and Jax would sit somewhere making notes on the annual needle shedding of a nearby fir tree. Everyone else was setting up energon caches, defensive systems and more reliable communication devices. Even the least tech-savvy Warrior could carry heavy things from here to there with a minimum of instruction. Bumblebee was often helping to carry, when he wasn't scouting and reporting on locations or babysitting Jax to make sure he stayed out of trouble, so Throttle's only real complaint was Jax himself, who always claimed to be too busy to help do almost anything.

On this particular day, the sun was a bright, blinding disk in the sky. Throttle and Bumblebee were working in tandem hauling the larger pieces for a new radio tower, and Jax was making notes on the ravens who flitted boldly among them, where most birds shied away while the Autobots were in motion when they were in robot mode. Aside from the report where he explained the predicament he was in during the time he was stuck as a bird's nest, Bumblebee had not mentioned the ravens. Assuredly Jax had read that report, but the birds fascinated him anyway, for reasons Bumblebee didn't care to guess at.

"You could be just the slightest bit helpful," Throttle grunted at Jax, something which had been said a hundred times over in just the last few days alone.

The prompt for this remark was that Throttle and Bumblebee were carrying between them a heavy piece of metal support structure, which they were taking up out of the canyon where they'd made their most recent camp. The long distance communication array was to be set up at the top, where it would encounter the least interference. The stronger but less agile Throttle was taking the back end of the project, while Bumblebee took the front. Bumblebee had his back to the narrow cliff path they'd been using, because this particular object was too heavy and awkward for him to keep hold of if it was behind him. Throttle was the stronger and therefore took more weight as Bumblebee worked his way up, but his ability to give directions left something to be desired. More than once, giving a bad direction, Throttle had nearly sent Bumblebee tumbling off the path. It would be much easier if a third party, not hindered by weight or bad angle, could observe and give instructions to direct them up the path. But, of course, Jax came back with his constant refrain.

"I'm busy right now."

Thus far, largely because of Axle's instructions on the matter, Throttle had let Jax be. Autobot soldier or not, Jax answered to a different chain of command from Throttle, though of course ultimately they both answered to the same Prime. And technically Jax was carrying out his assignment. But the rest of them found time to go above and beyond their job description. For instance, it was not in Throttle's (or Bumblebee's) job description to build the frame for this radio tower. But Axle had assigned whoever wasn't otherwise occupied to aid in the construction of the device, it being of import and benefit to all. Throttle and Bumblebee had in part volunteered, and in part been told to participate. Jax, however, somehow always eeled out of these sorts of jobs.

However tolerant he might normally be, in Throttle's hot brain, the grief at recently realizing his home was now and forever gone combined with the frustration of having been given this backwater planet as what might well be his final mission, and annoyance at having participated in a series of tasks for which he lacked the proper training was added to the fear that the Decepticon might actually come here before the Autobots were adequately prepared, and wipe out the garrison on Earth almost before it was established, leaving the Autobots with that many fewer soldiers to fight back with, that much less energon to survive on, and one less planet on which to survive. That and a thousand other minor discomforts and inconveniences that had manifested since they'd landed on Earth came together like something of a mental lightning bolt, and Throttle lost his temper.

Over the buzz of frantic protest from Bumblebee (which upset the ravens enough that they flew away, scolding indignantly), Throttle dropped his end of the frame material, ran over to Jax and knocked the notes aside with one hand, lifting Jax by the chest plate with the other.

"Don't you get it!?" Throttle shouted, "Cybertron is dead! Earth may be all we have left! If we don't get this damned radio set up, we won't have any warning when the Decepticons come to try and destroy what's left of us! And we won't be able to warn or direct any incoming Autobot ships, either! Great Cybertron, what's the matter with you!? Aren't you an Autobot at all!? Don't you get it!?"

While Throttle was shouting, Bumblebee lost control of the metal bar, it being too heavy for just one bot. Despite his efforts, it slid back down the path, undoing all the progress of almost half an hour of work, and then clanging brutally against a rock. Still buzzing, too agitated to even form words, Bumblebee pursued the bar and inspected it briefly for damage, before turning on Throttle and Jax, just as the latter began to yell his rebuttal.

"What you don't get is that my work is more important than ever!" Jax shot back, "If we are to live here, we have to understand the intricacies of this world, to make sure we don't damage it irreversibly like we did Cybertron, and so that we know how to use it to our advantage. Did you know that, under the present conditions, a blaster shot here and now risks starting a fire large enough to endanger not just the local fauna and flora, but us as well? I bet you didn't!" this might have had a more desirable effect on Throttle, had Jax not sounded so smug and superior as he said it.

Jax then proceeded to make a bad situation worse by adding arrogantly, "No! Of course you don't know! You're just a big, dumb soldier who does whatever he's told, without once stopping to think for yourself! You're probably only an Autobot because someone told you to be, because you couldn't possibly be bright enough to have made that decision on your own!"

That was too much to ask Throttle to take. He drew back his fist and prepared to strike Jax. However, Bumblebee had by this point abandoned the damaged building material, and took a leap at Throttle, managing to arrest the movement of his arm by essentially wrapping his legs around Throttle's torso and his arms around Throttle's shoulder and upper arm.

For a moment, his wild buzzing was fully incoherent, then he managed to start babbling, _{Stop it! Fighting each other won't help anything!}_ as Throttle resisted, Bumblebee persisted, _{You're both morons if you can't see that acting this way is worse than pointless! We are Autobots, and Autobots don't turn on each other! Not like this!}_

One of the ravens that had flown off in a panic at the start of the altercation had plucked up its courage and come back. It tried to land on Bumblebee, just as Throttle shook him loose, knocking him to the ground. Bumblebee struck the bird on his way down. The pained shriek of the raven when Bumblebee hit it froze all three of them. Bumblebee felt as if his spark had been stopped cold and let out an incoherent wail. Shaking off the shock, Bumblebee rolled himself upright and went to the fallen bird. It was so small he had difficulty scooping it off the ground. Unconsciously, he was burring wordlessly, a sound of shocked horror and pain at the damage they had just caused.

"Now look what you've done," Jax spat, but Throttle wasn't paying attention to him any more.

In fact, Throttle had dropped Jax in the dirt and walked over to where Bumblebee knelt.

"Is it... is it alright?" Throttle asked meekly, "I didn't mean to hurt it. I didn't know it was there."

 _{Go away,}_ Bumblebee snarled, _{Both of you! Just... go.}_

He didn't even noticed when both complied. He was unaware of it as they picked up the support beam and resumed work on the communication array, leaving him to his grief. He didn't notice that other Autobots had been drawn to the sound of the scuffle, arriving after the altercation was already over, and then quietly departing. They were accustomed to the presence of the ravens. They too saw the damage that had been wrought. They too were grieved by it, as only Autobots can be.

They knew, of course, that destruction of Earth and its creatures was unforgivable. This was only a bird, and it was realized by Autobot Command that some damage was unavoidable, Autobots were too big and powerful for it to be otherwise, so there was not likely to be any rebuke for such a minor offense. But they knew the ravens were living beings, and that they were as helpless as they were harmless in the face of the Autobots. Both scientist and soldier were wounded deeply by the incident, but none so much as Bumblebee himself.

The ravens had remembered that he had served as a safe haven for them, passed that knowledge from one generation to the next, to their entire flock it had seemed. They had trusted him. It had been such a stupid fight, just frayed nerves striking each other. A minor scuffle, a brief loss of temper, and this raven had became collateral damage. And that was just a disagreement between three Autobots. What would happen when the Decepticons arrived? The numbers greater? The stakes higher? Bumblebee's pain was for much more than just the single bird that had suffered from their momentary carelessness.

An even deeper agony that cut into him was the realization that there was no choice. Cybertron was dead. The war was moving outward. Even if the Autobots were to leave the Earth right now, today, the Decepticons would eventually claim it for their own, conquer and destroy it to achieve their own ends.

It was a cruel reality that Bumblebee faced as he came to understand that, however hard they tried, the Autobots would still end up by their presence causing damage and death, but that leaving would only result in even more extensive destruction. It wasn't right. But the nature of existence itself did not care for right or wrong; giving life and death, advantage and disadvantage to each with cold impartiality. That was true fairness, though no one liked to admit it.

As he looked at the broken body of the raven, its black feathers blown by a stirring wind, Bumblebee wondered if Earth would have to die for the sake of the bloody war between the Autobots and Decepticons. Even if the Autobots were willing to die to prevent that from happening, it might not be up to them in the end, he knew.

The deepest pain he felt was for the Earth he realized he could not protect.

 _I do not want this world to die,_ the thought struck him to the core.

And then a still small voice seemed to answer, _The Prime would never allow it._

Bumblebee had sworn service to Optimus Prime. He had given his word, placing all of his devotion, and his trust, in a leader who was right now very, very far away. Despite that distance, he had to have faith in Optimus, otherwise all of this meant nothing. He had made a decision so long ago to become an Autobot, and he must now live or die with it. He had to trust in Optimus to make the right call for Earth. He had to have faith in the wisdom of the last of the Primes.

For him, there was no other option.


	12. Chapter 11

Things resumed their establishing pattern. The ravens were not seen near the Autobots again. Warriors continued to guard and build, complaining all the while that they were not designed for construction. Jax helped minimally, but mostly made himself scarce around the developing base, using observations of humans as the excuse for his absence.

There was a small group living near a river that, by virtue of being easy to spot and being fairly active, served as the most interesting and commonly viewed group of humans in the area. It helped that their settlement was backed by mountainous terrain they themselves were disinclined to scale, for that made good cover for watching Autobots, allowing them to see without being seen, and with minimal risk that some venturesome youth would go stumbling into the forest and run into them (this had happened to Bumblebee once, though it appeared none of the other humans later believed the youth when he tried to describe what he'd seen).

Jax could almost always be found here.

"You know," Jax said one day when Bumblebee found him in the usual spot, "I think the group on this side of the river and the one on the other side don't get along too well. I think that other group is why our group looks a little disheveled sometimes. I think that other group raids this one at night. I'd love to see that. I wonder if Axle would let us out at night."

Bumblebee wasn't too fond of that notion. Humans were too low to the ground, too small to hear reliably or see in the dark very well. And, if there was fighting going on, their actions would be more unpredictable than usual. Avoiding contact would be virtually impossible to guarantee. He also wasn't thrilled by Jax's use of the word 'our', as though this particular cluster of humanity belonged to them in some way. There were a lot of ways that kind of thinking could go wrong. But, as per usual, he said nothing.

It was the only way to get along with Jax.

"I don't think our group is in very good shape," Jax continued, "Based on the amount of animal and foliage products they consume in an average day, I'd say their stores are pitiful. You said something about life shutting down for awhile periodically. How close is that?"

 _{Winter. Based on previous data, I'd say approximately fifty-six days.}_

"And what happens in winter? Refresh my memory."

 _{Animals leave the area. Some of them disappear, but I don't think they leave. I think they hide. Plants die. The water gets so cold it freezes. Frozen water -not necessarily ice- falls from the sky at times, and piles up on the ground. Humans don't seem to like it. I think cold is bad for them.}_

"So basically, if they don't have enough food stored, they'll starve? Because they need regular intake, right? They're not like us, able to hold fuel in reserves."

 _{Correct.}_

"They've been residents since you arrived, yes?"

 _{I don't know. I only encountered them sixty-two days before you and the others arrived. But I'd never been in this area before.}_

"So maybe they don't migrate, even if some humans do."

 _{Maybe,}_ Bumblebee conceded.

"Don't you think that's relevant? Different varieties, adapted to different locations? That's fascinating."

Bumblebee didn't answer that.

Bumblebee had discovered early in their relationship that Jax needed no encouragement to continue talking. In fact, as Throttle and even Axle had repeatedly been forced to demonstrate, it generally took a significant amount of _dis_ couragement to get him to stop talking, especially once he got on a roll. And, when it came to humans, Jax was _always_ on a roll. So he kept talking about how fascinating his discoveries of the day were, and submitting new theories, and revised ones from the day before.

For the most part, Bumblebee was only half-listening. Some of that was due to disinterest, but mostly it was because Jax talked so rapidly that one point would just get buried under another as he continued to babble excitedly. Bumblebee still hadn't fully reintegrated social behavior into his repertoire, and Jax would often be classified by his subsystems as background noise, unnecessary to pay conscious attention to. It didn't seem to matter, because Jax was always happy to repeat himself when asked... or even when not asked. Jax talked so much that it was virtually a give that he would say the same thing again several times in a five or ten minute period.

* * *

"You guys sure you saw enough out there?" Throttle asked irritably, "Think maybe there's a shrub out there you haven't inspected yet?"

 _{I do not answer to you,}_ Bumblebee spat, brushing past Throttle.

Throttle's eyes narrowed. He didn't like the Scout's attitude. And he'd heard about this Scout back on Cybertron. Loner type, strictly self reliant. Trusting no one and trusted by no one. It seemed like the chain of command was something he thought himself exempted from. That backtalk pretty much confirmed the suspicion Throttle had harbored since arrival.

"I don't know what you're so uptight about," Jax said, interrupting Throttle's line of thought, "The most dangerous thing around is that human camp and, impressive as they are to me, you'd barely feel it if they all attacked you at once. In fact, you're so thick, you probably wouldn't notice them at all. Be sure you watch your step around here. Earth creatures make an unpleasant 'squish' sound when you flatten them."

If Throttle felt distrust of Bumblebee, he felt full on loathing for Jax. But Throttle was not one to lose his composure easily, and his one slip up had led to consequences dire enough that he dared not lose his temper with Jax again. He balled his hands into fists and -angrily but without action- bore Jax's uncalled for mockery at his expense. They were just words, spoken by one who had no rank Throttle was expected to recognize or respect, they had no meaning. This Autobot had no meaning.

Bumblebee glanced back and saw that Jax was having a fine time tormenting bots bigger and stronger than he was. He regretted having responded to Throttle's baiting. Maybe Throttle's words had been inappropriate, but Bumblebee wasn't responsible for what the Warrior said, only how he himself responded. He'd spent so much time training himself not to care about other Autobots, not to get close or to develop anything akin to respect for them. Any one of them could be dead inside of the day. At the least, he could expect to be sent away from any battle. He was a Scout, a messenger. His job was to run.

But not anymore. He had to learn that.

The thought didn't cause him to turn back and apologize, or to try and distract Jax from harassing Throttle. He couldn't bring himself to be that involved. Besides which, he'd developed something like a bias against Throttle ever since the raven incident. He knew it had been an accident, and had noticed Throttle had gone out of his way not to disturb wildlife since, but Bumblebee didn't like Throttle anyway. He couldn't help it, he was still angry over the raven's death.

Actually, to some degree, Bumblebee was still just plain angry.

He'd had enough time on Earth to work through a lot of stuff, but evidently he hadn't been as successful at doing away with his hostility as he'd thought. The anger was still there, and it wasn't buried all that deep. Robbed of its desired target, it surfaced when he least expected and directed itself towards those who didn't necessarily deserve it.

* * *

Tempers flared again over the next week, because it was raining again. Based on new information, the Autobot scientists working on the task (presumably still back at Cybertron) were confident they had developed a new formula for preventing water damage, and it was being shipped this way now. In the meantime, the Earth-based Autobots did what they could to stay out of the rain, and to keep their more delicate equipment from getting soaked. Unfortunately, the Long Distance Transmitter couldn't be moved and they didn't have anything to cover or protect it with, so they would simply have to deal with whatever damage it sustained after the rain stopped. In the meantime, inactivity and cramped conditions in the cliff-side caves were working on nerve wires and nearly everyone was low on tolerance.

From several years of practice, Bumblebee basically dropped into a kind of energy conservation mode. He said little, moved less, and generally let all the minor disagreements of his cave mates wash over him like vaguely irritating background noise. Anyone who'd spent much time in the field knew that a lot of war was just waiting. Huge swathes of time were taken in traveling, and in waiting, only a few minutes at most were devoted to the high speed violence that resulted in death for yourself or the enemy.

The waiting was what drove a bot mad.

Jax didn't make things any easier, by chattering nonstop about humans at anyone within earshot. He talked about their habits, talked about the apparent feud between the two river settlements, and he worried about what would happen to them if the rain flooded the river and the settlements were washed away. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't an Autobot Warrior in the entire system of caves that was interested. And they were even less enthralled the five hundredth time Jax mentioned a given point.

"I honestly can't figure how you can stand it, Scout."

The sound of words meant for him, addressed to his rank and function, spoken by Axle his CO, got Bumblebee's attention where nothing else in recent days had. Bumblebee's optics turned and focused and he looked up at Axle, who was of course much taller than himself.

"The rain, _or_ Jax," Axle continued, gazing out beyond the mouth of the cave at the curtain of falling water, "I guess I'm lucky being a Scout was only a rank when I was coming up, not a full time occupation. I don't think I would have had the patience for it. Not when I was young."

Bumblebee was only vaguely aware that there had been a time when scouting was just something soldiers did at times, there was no special training involved, nor a distinct difference in their written function. Low ranking soldiers got picked for the task primarily because they were the most expendable because they had the least experience and knowledge. It was a matter of pure practicality; more experienced soldiers were not only more effective against the enemy, but they could pass their skills to new recruits. It had nothing to do with favoring older bots, and everything to do with trying to win the war, and to spare as many lives as possible in the long run.

By the time Bumblebee had enlisted, not only was Scouting an occupation as well as a rank, the need for Scouts was great. Bumblebee aspired to be a Warrior one day, but that was a rank distinction. Functionally, he would always have the specialized training, equipment and experience of a long-term Scout. Thus, no matter what rank he one day achieved, he would _always_ be a Scout.

"Five years alone on this rock," Axle went on, oblivious of Bumblebee's wandering thoughts, "I can't even imagine what that must've been like."

 _ _{Quiet,}__ Bumblebee replied thoughtfully, __{It was... very quiet.}__

Axle gave him an amused smile and asked, "Is that a suggestion?"

 _ _{Only an observation,}__ Bumblebee replied neutrally.

In truth, he didn't mind Axle as a CO. Axle was not the most tolerant of COs, but he was fair. Though he had clearly worked and fought alongside Throttle for many years, Axle did not play favorites. If Throttle came on too strong, Axle would come down on him just as hard as anyone else. Throttle, for his part, did not begrudge this, seeking no special privilege for his long term association with the current designated leader of the Earth-based Autobot forces.

It was doubtful anyone except maybe Throttle was actually fond of Axle, but the only one who had an actual problem with him was, of course, Jax. Jax had a problem with just about everybody one way or another. His primary issue with Axle had to do with the restrictions Axle placed on his research. Though the decision was based on Bumblebee's reports and recommendations, it was Axle who forbade approaching the human settlement at night. He also disallowed Jax from venturing more than a certain distance away from the base. Jax argued that there was nowhere on Earth outside of comm range, but Axle pointed out that it would take time for Jax to get back in an emergency situation, and time for anyone to reach him if he happened to get into trouble.

There was no such thing as a Ground Bridge yet. Not on Earth anyway. Bumblebee didn't know it, but during his time as a POW, he had seen a prototype Space Bridge. It was included in his recorded memories, but he had no conscious recollection of it. Most of the memories from that time were too scrambled to make anything of, but the Space Bridge prototype had made a significant impression. The image of that prototype had gotten around, and there were not a few Autobots not only attempting to replicate it, but to develop from it a shorter-range device, one that would be less expensive in energon to run. If the Autobots could not match or surpass this technological advancement, the war was as good as lost, and the Autobots were sure to be destroyed en masse.

Bumblebee didn't know it, but the Decepticons had nearly perfected their Space Bridge. The time of waiting was going to be over sooner than any of the Earth-based Autobots could imagine.


	13. Chapter 12

Bumblebee was roused from a stasis nap by the sound of stealthy steps passing nearby. It took him less than the beat of a spark to focus his eyes, and simultaneously realize several things.

One thing was that the rain had stopped sometime earlier in the night. Another was that Jax was leaving the cave where they had all been cooped up for days, even though it was night and that went against Axle's instructions. A third thing Bumblebee noticed was that time and distance from the war or else the false sense of protection the rain offered had either made Axle too careless to set a watch, or else the Warrior put on guard had abandoned his post through irresponsibility or carelessness, because no one was noticing Jax departing. Clearly Jax had seen his opportunity to slip out unnoticed, and he was taking it. But he hadn't taken into account the fact that Bumblebee was resting near the cave's main entrance, and the only one who could slip past a Scout unnoticed was another Scout.

It was no mystery to Bumblebee where Jax was going. An ancient veteran with brain rust and one foot in the scrapheap could have guessed where Jax was going. He had a passing interest in everything to do with Earth, but he was truly passionate about only one subject: Humans.

Bumblebee had felt a growing concern about Jax's near-obsession, ever since he had first referred to the one band of humans as "ours," and a week as a captive audience to Jax's mania for humanity had done nothing to allay his fears. Though he had not realized it consciously, Bumblebee's instincts were warning him that Jax's fascination with humans was actually more dangerous than the indifference of the Autobot Warriors. Passion for a subject is not the same as understanding of it, and knowledge can be far from wisdom. More and more, Jax had been voicing an unrealized desire to directly aid the subjects of his study, even though interference in humankind's development was strictly forbidden.

Now, as he watched Jax slip away through the water-logged night, Bumblebee had the horrible feeling the historian hobbyist and egotistical researcher was going to do something he ought not. It did not occur to him, even for a tick, to wake the other Autobots. Bumblebee had worked as a loner for too long. Besides which, if he was wrong about what Jax was doing, he would not only never live down the shame, but he would find himself on the wrong side of the irascible scientist, somewhere he had so far taken grave effort to avoid being.

Silent as a shadow, Bumblebee followed Jax away from base camp.

He did not bother to follow too closely, allowing Jax to get out of sight at times. After all, he knew where Jax was going, and instinct told him he didn't want Jax to be aware of his presence. Subconsciously, he was testing Jax, to find out if Jax could be trusted without supervision. If Jax knew he was there, that might alter his behavior. It would perhaps have amused him to realize that he was conducting research on Jax the same way the researcher had heretofore been studying the humans, but he did not realize it, and sensed that this was no time for amusement.

Jax was remarkably incautious once he was beyond the base, making little attempt to be stealthy in his movements, and never once pausing to check if he was being followed, nor even jinking from his ultimate goal or doubling back to try and hide where he was going. These things were so deeply ingrained in Bumblebee's habits that he'd done them on Earth when he was alone. In Bumblebee's experience, if survival tactics weren't that deeply embedded, you didn't survive.

However, just now Jax's survival was not the highest of Bumblebee's priorities. In fact, he suspected quite strongly that he might have to make a decision concerning that. Bumblebee knew he could take Jax down, of that there could be no doubt. Jax was larger than Bumblebee, but he was weaker and Bumblebee knew his combat skills left something to be desired. But if things went badly -and they might go very badly- Bumblebee might have to make a choice.

Except the choice had already been made.

From the moment he had chosen to place his complete faith in the Prime, he had also chosen to obey that Prime's orders above all else. And those orders stipulated that Cybertronians must not be allowed to interfere in the affairs of humanity. The instructions had specifically included the phrase 'by any means necessary.' It was the last thing Bumblebee wanted, and he would do whatever he could to avoid the possibility, but the same sixth sense that used to tell him that Decepticons were just over the hill now warned him that Jax was an unacceptable danger to humanity.

Someday in the future, Bumblebee would understand Optimus' reasons for safeguarding humanity in the way he chose to. Someday he would even harbor no small amount of affection for the race and for their planet. But today he was moved exclusively by loyalty, and a profound sense of duty.

Long before he reached the settlement observation site, Bumblebee became aware of smoke in the air, and the flickering of flames through the trees. He remembered what Jax had said about the raiders, and he suspected that was the cause of the fire. He knew it couldn't be Jax, firstly because he was certain the other Autobot hadn't gotten that far yet, and secondly because there had been no report of blaster fire, and it was thoroughly unlikely that Jax would use anything else which would cause flames or smoke.

Shortly thereafter, he was at an angle to see that Jax was not climbing to the mesa they generally watched from. Instead, the trail Jax had left led into the forest, towards the settlement.

Normally humans didn't like to go out at night. Bumblebee had observed them to be typically diurnal, and he had speculated (and Jax supported it) that they might not be able to see well in darkness. But if there was a battle or raid going on, all bets were off as to where the humans might go and what they might do. Demands of survival in such a situation outweighed mood or preference.

Bumblebee increased his pace, realizing that even if Jax made the seemingly unlikely decision not to interfere, he might not be wise enough to remain unnoticed without help.

He hoped nothing would happen. It would make him feel a lot better, to see that Jax had a measure of self control. He wanted fewer things to worry about, he wanted to be less suspicious. He wanted to be more trusting. And he wanted to relearn how to get along with his own kind. Jax wasn't a bad sort, a bit obnoxious maybe, but really-

-Bumblebee never finished that thought.

Catching up to Jax, it was obvious that his worst fears concerning Jax were about to come to fruition. The other Autobot had drawn his weapon, and was heading for the edge of the treeline, his every intention clearly being to attack the raiders of the settlement.

Bumblebee had to stop him. There was no other option.

Reaction happened before consideration, and Bumblebee slammed sideways into Jax, knocking him down and pushing him back into cover at the same time. He didn't even think, his blaster seemed to deploy of its own accord and the end came to land against Jax's head.

Jax cried out as he fell, and then spat an epithet when he realized who had attacked him. It was sheer luck that they were far enough away and the humans too preoccupied with their own activities to notice the commotion coming from a certain section of the forest. At the moment he launched his assault on Jax, Bumblebee had actually forgotten the humans entirely, his whole being becoming centered upon the task of taking down what had -to him- just become the enemy.

"What's the matter with you!?" Jax snarled, fear turning to rage, failing to recognize that Bumblebee had halted just a single beat before killing him.

Swift, silent executions were a Scout's main defense when he tackled adversaries behind enemy lines. Anything else would attract notice, and a Scout discovered was a Scout outnumbered and surrounded. Such a Scout was as good as dead, killed on sight if he was lucky. For an awful second, Bumblebee had been prepared to shoot, to kill; no hesitation and no question. Who he had been forced to become in order to survive the hostile territories on Cybertron was just beneath the surface, and this would not have been the first time he'd killed another who bore the signet of the Autobots, for Bumblebee had in his time been sent to ferret out traitors among the Autobot ranks.

Such assignments had eroded his trust in his own kind, and those who knew what he did bore a natural resentment of his presence, because it suggested they themselves were not trusted, or that they could not trust one or more whom they fought alongside daily. When it came to situations like that, you had to wait until you were dead sure, until there could be no doubt, and then you had to be quick to take them down, or else they'd take you down. It was reflex, and controlling it took enormous willpower.

It took several seconds for Bumblebee's head to clear, for the blackness of his eyes to fade out.

 _{Me?}_ He snarled finally, struggling more than usual to get the words through his mangled voice-box, _{What's the matter with_ _ **you**_ _? What part of 'no interference' do you not understand?!}_

"Those raiders are monsters! They're destroying that settlement!" Jax spat back, entirely unaware of being little more than a breath away from death, "I can't just do nothing!"

 _{That's_ _ **exactly**_ _what you can do. This planet is not ours. These are not our people, they are not our pets, it is not for us to say which of them live and which die. They do not belong to us.}_

"But it's not right, the strong destroying the weak," Jax protested, and he sounded so reasonable, so close to the Autobot edict that it was difficult to resist accepting it, "I can protect them. _We_ can protect them. We can stop them from making the mistakes we made!"

 _{Who are we to decide what is right for them?}_ Bumblebee asked levelly.

"We are wiser, more advanced-" Jax began, but Bumblebee cut him off ferociously, almost more to prevent himself from straying off the straight and narrow path than anything.

 _{Our world is dead! Don't you get that?_ **We** _destroyed it. Who are we to decide what is and what is not best for another world when we've killed the only one we had!?}_

Jax stared at him, and it was clear to Bumblebee for the first time that Jax truly had not realized how dire conditions back home had become. It took him a bit to regain enough composure to speak.

"We... we know better now," Jax said shakily, "We've learned from our mistakes. We can-"

The desire to believe Jax was so strong Bumblebee was almost shaking with it. Cybertronians had the power to keep humanity in check, to stop them from waging wars, to keep them from hurting one another. They had that power. And they were much longer lived than humans. Most of them would probably outlive the Earth itself, assuming no calamity befell them. They could develop and guide a culture of peace. It sounded good, noble even.

In a moment of insight beyond his years, there flashed in his mind the dark image of Megatron, who craved power and control above all else. Who sought to remake Cybertron in his own image, to be the undisputed and absolute ruler of all, not merely a leader in war, but a dictator of his own brand of peace, which was actually oppression of the weak, and destruction of any who dared disagree with him.

Absolute power.

It would be easy, so terribly easy, for Bumblebee to tell himself that none of the Autobots would be like that. They would use their power only for good. But he was too well acquainted with history, and he knew that Megatron had once shared the ideals of the Primes. He had not strayed all at once, but it had begun with the arrogant assumption that _he_ knew better than all others how things should be done, that _he_ alone understood what was truly right and just, that if _he_ were in power then everything would be better. It was the beginning of a dark road straight into the Pit, and Bumblebee saw its hungry, gaping maw lying at the end of that path. Death, not just of self and Cybertron, but spark as well. That was the end reward for any who went down such a path.

Fear, revulsion and horror at how seductively evil had whispered to him, how blackly it gazed from behind the still-earnest blue eyes of Jax caused Bumblebee to instinctively recoil, as if it were a living thing that might crawl up onto him. Wordless burring shuddered out of him.

"We don't have to be powerless," Jax persisted, mistaking Bumblebee's sounds as those of cracking certainty rather than stark abhorrence and sheer terror, "We can make them be good. That's what Autobots do. What we do, we do for the good of all."

A whirl of emotions tore through Bumblebee, and he struggled to maintain his self-control, to keep a handle on the situation. Floundering, drowning, he found a life raft in that emotionally draining sea, and clung to it.

 _{The Prime's orders are to leave them be.}_

He didn't have to say that Jax had no alternative. It was in his voice. If Jax pushed him, Bumblebee would shoot. He felt he had no choice. He had to keep Jax away from the humans. For now and forever.

"Optimus is not God!" Jax snapped.

 _{Neither,}_ Bumblebee growled in a low voice, _{Are you.}_


	14. Chapter 13

Axle was annoyed by the ruckus that woke him; Throttle was infuriated by it.

"What's going on?!" Throttle demanded in the fierce tone he usually reserved for enemies.

"This Scout is psychopathic! That's what!" Jax practically screamed, "He tried to shoot me!"

 _{If I had tried to shoot you,}_ the Scout replied quietly, _{You would be dead.}_

"SEE!? See what I mean!?" Jax waved a hand at Bumblebee, who appeared guarded but passive.

"Let's start from the beginning," Axle said, forcing himself to sound calmly diplomatic, even though he felt like socking the both of them, "Bumblebee, report."

"Him!? You're going to ask him!?" Jax cried before Bumblebee could respond.

" _You_ be quiet," Throttle growled, and his menacing bulk was enough to silence the irate scientist.

But of course, Jax could not be silenced for long, and Bumblebee's explanation of his transgression was punctuated by repeated protests. Jax didn't dare accuse Bumblebee of lying, but he insisted his actions were perfectly reasonable, or that Bumblebee had misinterpreted them. Axle or Throttle silenced him each time, ignoring his protests until Bumblebee had reached his conclusion.

Well practiced at setting his personal feelings aside when he made reports on Decepticon activities back on Cybertron, it did not take him long, and he left it to Jax to explain why he had decided to act as he had. He also chose to omit the part where Jax tried to sway him. It had no relevance because Jax had not succeeded, but it might be seen as a larger crime than those Jax had already committed, though of course nothing compared to the one he had _tried_ to commit.

Throttle, who had never shown any interest or affinity for humans, nonetheless looked sickened by the idea that Jax thought it was okay to kill them. It was clear from his eyes that he was remembering the raven. The raven had been bad enough. That was only a bird, and it had been an accident, but even so it had been clear Throttle felt guilt over it for quite some time. Jax had tried to kill humans, on purpose, in numbers. And this in addition to revealing himself to them in the first place. And that on top of leaving base camp against Axle's explicit orders.

It was necessary for Autobot soldiers to kill sometimes. But they killed because they had to. The Decepticons would, given the opportunity, not only kill them, but torture and enslave them, and then kill them once they were no longer of any use. This was not assumption or propaganda. Every Autobot here -except possibly Jax- had seen such cruelty, or at least its aftermath. All of them -including Jax- had lost friends to this war with the Decepticons. But Jax's intended actions were not those of a soldier defending his own, or his home. They were of a murderer, attacking those who could not defend themselves against him. And, even though Bumblebee didn't say it, Axle and Throttle could both assuredly read the underlying intent, to become as a god to mankind. And they knew full well that such was Megatron's aim, to become not only ruler, but supreme being. There was no end to craving for that kind of power. Megatron would always want more.

And, if Bumblebee's report was accurate, the same might be true of Jax.

It was more than a minor infraction. It implied a weakness of character that was beyond merely irresponsible. It was dangerous. No one understood the humans better than Jax. No one had observed them more closely, or held deeper affection for the species. The other Autobots had been preoccupied with preparations for the battle with the Decepticons they knew was coming. Throttle didn't even like the ravens, he found them messy and irritating, but he was horrified to have killed one. But Jax stood, clearly defiant, unrepentant, and determined to explain away his actions, not by denying having done them but by attempting to justify them to Axle; the highest authority available to him.

"I was trying to protect the helpless," Jax began, "That's what Autobots _do_."

 _{You made a judgment call based off of limited intel and no experience!}_ Bumblebee shot back.

"I understand more about humans than you could ever hope to learn, Scout!" Jax snarled, and there was an ugly look in his eyes Bumblebee hadn't seen in him before; a look Bumblebee knew to fear.

"You don't deny the accusation?" Axle asked impassively.

"Why would I deny it?" Jax demanded, but didn't wait for answer, and instead went on, "The people on this side of the river are only trying to survive. They aren't strong enough to defend themselves against the raiders from the other side of the river. They're going to be destroyed!" he took it further, "And who are any of you to judge me? All you do is gripe about the weather! You haven't even bothered trying to look at this planet and see the things in it that are worth appreciating! You don't know the first thing about humans! The people of Earth are like us. So much so that they're going to make our mistakes someday. Unless we put a stop to it, this world is going to die just like ours has!"

After this final shouted statement had finished ringing in their ears, a quiet descended. All of them had known, but nobody had actually said it. Not out loud. It was as if they had been ignoring a dam that was starting to overflow, but suddenly the dam broke, and thousands and thousands of gallons of water suddenly tumbled forth and became a flash flood, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake.

No one said anything for an amount of time Bumblebee didn't bother to measure.

In a strange way, it was the difference between knowing someone had been killed in action, and seeing the proof in their broken remains. None of them had seen what had become of Cybertron, and most of them never would. But somehow, acknowledging it aloud brought them to full awareness that their home was gone, that there was nowhere for them to go back to.

 _If we lose Earth,_ he realized, _we lose everything._

It was evident to him that the others had all reached the same dark conclusion. Even Jax realized this, despite having much less time to think about and come to terms with it.

"What becomes of us if humans cover the Earth with war? What good comes from letting the raiders destroy that settlement? That's what will happen eventually. Ignorant as you are of Cybertron's history, surely you must all be capable of realizing that. If we wait, the humans will become more powerful. One day they will find out about us. If we let people like the raiders become the future of humanity, someday when they're powerful enough they will destroy us. We can stop that, here and now. We can end their age of warfare before it begins."

The others had heard Megatron's speeches before. But they had never been POWs. He had not spoken to them with eloquent and persuasive words, while his eyes lit with pleasure as his right hand inflicted horrific torture upon them. Without that bitter experience, Jax's words were more compelling. Even Bumblebee, with his experience and insight, felt somewhere in him a longing to listen to Jax. But that was a voice he had already silenced, and he was relieved to see Axle was not going to be swayed either.

"This is your complaint, Scout," Axle managed thickly, his mind still clearly on the conscious recognition of Cybertron's death, "Get up to the LDT and send a message to Cybertron. We'll let command decide how to rule on this. Throttle, you keep track of Jax. Jax, you do not leave camp."

There were groans of protest from Throttle and Jax. Bumblebee was already gone.

Bumblebee was relieved to have been removed from the situation. When he went for Jax, some part of him had given the order to kill, and he'd felt it again when Jax had tried to persuade him near the river. But he'd felt it most of all just now, because he had suddenly sensed how dangerous Jax would be if left alive. Jax had been the enemy, a threat to those Bumblebee had been assigned to protect. Even though Jax had been stopped physically, he was still able to talk, and others might be willing to listen. It was probably in this way that Megatron had first assembled his army. The compulsion to kill had been almost overwhelming, because Bumblebee had understood that -even disarmed- Jax had the power to be extremely dangerous. By less than a millisecond had Jax's life been spared.

Would that have been murder? Or would it merely have been elimination of a credible threat? Bumblebee didn't know, but he didn't want to be the one to make that call. Not anymore. He wanted... well, it didn't matter what he wanted.

 _You're one of the lucky ones_ , he reminded himself, _You don't remember a time before the war. You don't even have any idea what has been lost in all of this._

Yeah, one of the lucky ones. Right. Considered inexperienced as a result of his youth, never taken seriously because he was after all only a Scout, fighting for a world he'd never seen and couldn't really believe in... yeah. One of the lucky ones. Sure.

He realized he was shaking. From what? Fear? Anger? Did it matter now?

Reaching the top of the cliff where the LDT sat, Bumblebee noticed that it had taken damage and didn't work. He felt momentary fury surging through him. Axle must have known about this! Bumblebee was not some constructicon! This wasn't his kind of work. It was demeaning.

He stopped himself, confused by his own anger, knowing it wasn't really meant for Axle, but not sure who was meant for. What was it actually the result of? Surely he couldn't be letting himself get bent out of shape by a soaked LDT. All it needed was to dry out a little. Take it apart, dry it off, put it back together. Take maybe an hour. Not a big deal.

He calmed down and set to work, but in a few minutes he felt the anger rising up again. This should have been fixed this morning! The soldiers at camp should have checked it, and repaired it. What was the matter with them, leaving communications down like this?!

Anger made him careless. Instead of carefully removing a portion of the LDT screen, he yanked it roughly. With a twang, it tore almost in two. Bumblebee swore at it. He hadn't been paying attention, so he deserved what he got. But he was still on the verge of pitching the whole works off the cliff.

His internal world was in turmoil, just when he'd been starting to put himself back together, suddenly all within him was chaos, and he couldn't seem to get control of his emotions.

Bumblebee was suffering from a pain he didn't understand. For in the natural course of time and not entirely uncomfortable association, Bumblebee had unconsciously bonded with the Earth-based Autobots. He had not realized it, for he felt distant and awkward, unable to fully integrate with these newcomers. It would not be accurate to say they had become his friends, more he had grown used to their company, tolerant of their quirks, and perhaps he'd come to welcome the sound of their voices as an alternative to the five years of isolation he had endured before their arrival. And it was Jax's voice he had heard most often of all. He had been frustrated and amused by Jax's antics, as perhaps a sensible brother feels watching the ridiculous behaviors of his irrational sibling.

It was the kind of bond that forges itself when no one is looking. They had not become his friends, it was true. But, despite a long lifespan and different way of coming into existence from humans, the process of bonding as family could be rapid and natural. Axle had become a father figure, Throttle a grumpy but well-respected uncle. Bumblebee was like a recently adopted son, who had just begun to find his place amongst the established family members.

And now his brother had broken faith, not only disobeying his father, but also breaking Law even higher than that, in ignoring the edict of the Prime. Worse, he seemed not to see the grievous nature of his crime, seemed not to recognize it as a crime at all. Bumblebee was hurt not only by the betrayal, but by the knowledge that his brother would suffer punishment for this, and that it had been he who'd brought Jax home to face the charges. He knew it was his duty, that honor and loyalty demanded nothing less than what he'd done, but it still hurt him deep in the spark, and he didn't understand why.

A thrumming overhead caused him to look up. An Autobot ship. More soldiers? Energon delivery vessel? Or had the evacuation begun in earnest? Bumblebee wondered.

The ship was coming in hot, the pilot probably hadn't taken Earth's peculiar atmosphere into account. Would probably line off in a... no, no it wouldn't. Then Bumblebee caught sight of the craft's tail as it swept by, and he saw that it was smoking. It didn't look like the results of a firefight, more like an unfortunate encounter with an asteroid.

Peering over the edge of the cliff, Bee saw that Axle was already mobilizing his troops.

Bumblebee felt rather detached as he watched the Autobots below scurry about. They didn't need him. And, if they did, they could always call him. The LDT might be out, but short distance communication was working fine. Looking up again, Bumblebee saw a pillar of smoke rising on the other side of the hill the ship had disappeared over. Not a long haul, they hadn't missed the landing site by much.

A shiver ran through him and he looked up, feeling as though a shadow had suddenly settled over him. But such was not the case. The sky, though dark in the predawn, was clear. The Decepticons might be on their way, but it didn't look like they'd be here tonight anyway.

Still, it served to make Bumblebee switch gears. The thought of Decepticons sort of steadied him, reminded him of who he was and what he was doing. He set Jax on the back burner, and went to work on the LDT. The emotions were neatly caged, and his actions became precise, mechanical.

Bumblebee got the LDT dried out and put back together faster than he'd anticipated. Showed what a bad attitude towards work could do, he supposed, making a project seem bigger than it really was. Even the screen he'd snapped had gone back together pretty well, no permanent harm done.

Bumblebee stretched and turned the device on.

 _"-say again, Decepticons inbound to your position,"_ the voice on the radio said.

Bumblebee swung towards where the Autobot cruiser had crashed. He saw no Decepticon ship, maybe it had been downed by a missile from one of the Autobots below. But he didn't have to see it.

The war of Cybertron had come to Earth. The Decepticons had arrived.


	15. Chapter 14

It had been a long, uncomfortable ride for Ratchet. The finer ships in the Autobot fleet were of course either in combat, or had been destroyed. And the ships running to Earth were smaller, innocuous things that might easily move unnoticed, or at least ignored. This particular ship was a cargo vessel, equipped by necessity with two of the finest pilots the Autobot army had. All the pilots for vessels carrying energon to off-world cache sites were expert. They had to be, flying ungainly tubs that were barely space worthy, and virtually unarmed. If there was trouble with the Decepticons, the pilot's skill was his only line of defense.

Personnel carriers had gone ahead, but Ratchet hadn't been on one of those for several reasons. He knew that one of those reasons was to add an extra layer of protection. Decepticons were more likely to go after personnel than cargo, knowing the Autobots were too smart to ferry anything of great value in their little dinghys. That established pattern was what made Ratchet safer on a cargo vessel now.

Ratchet wasn't just any medic, his name was well known to the Decepticons. He was one of the oldest, among the most skilled, and there had been many assassination attempts on him that had ended in spectacular failure. The Decepticons knew that the death of one skilled medic was worth uncountable numbers of soldiers in the field, because a medic could take any number of maimed or dying soldiers and set them back on their feet, ready to fight again. Ratchet was such a medic, and he was the only one to have survived the period of the war when medics were routinely sent into the field.

New medics had been trained since, but the practice of sending them out to the front-lines had been ended. There weren't enough medics, and they were too readily targeted. Ratchet had survived not only from luck and the protection Warriors were able to provide, but from his own abilities. He came from an age when medics were also Warriors. No one knew better than a medic where to strike and how. A medic knew the weak points better than anyone. In those days, medics had ended lives almost as often as they'd saved them. Many Decepticons carried grudges against medics, and Ratchet in particular.

Ratchet had not enjoyed his time in the field, not because of the danger involved, but because of the bot he'd become when he was out there. The first rule for a physician was to do no harm. Ratchet had been forced to break that rule. That was bad enough. But what he'd found in so doing was a part of himself he would have preferred never to see. Soldiers were matter of fact about killing, it was an ugly necessity they endured. But Ratchet had uncovered the fact that a part of him _enjoyed_ it. He was not the only one like that, but he was one of the few who -on discovering this part of themselves- had recoiled from it. Many had turned to the Decepticons, who condoned and even exulted in killing, most particularly the slaying of the helpless. But more still had simply become Rogues.

There were a lot of ways a bot could snap and turn Rogue, but the end result with Rogues was always the same. Rogues were killers without discrimination, and the worst of them were the ones who had become that way not through fear or horror or pain, but through discovering and submitting to that darkest part of their nature that reveled in the powerful feeling that came with murder. The Rogues that let that part of themselves take over were the hardest to stop. All Rogues were beyond reason in Ratchet's experience, but these rabid ones were not just killers, not just willfully enjoying the taking of life, but they were also very, very good at it.

That was what had killed the majority of those front-line medics. Either they had been killed by Rogues, or had become Rogues themselves. Either way, they had become one of the most hated and feared of Autobots, distrusted by their own and wanted dead by the Decepticons.

Ratchet was still technically a field medic, but it had been a long time since he'd been on the front-lines. Patients came to him these days, not the other way around. He'd still had to defend himself against Decepticons sent to kill him, but not so often, and the part of him that was a pleasure killer had slept for a long time now. He could kill without awakening it, but it wasn't easy. Of course, to his way of thinking, killing should never be easy, no matter how necessary it was. Once it was easy, you'd lost your way, and stepped onto a dark path from which there could be no escape.

"Hey, Doc Bot," said one of the pilots, "We're gettin' some radio chatter you might want to listen to."

Ratchet, lost in thought for the last day or so, roused himself and came up front.

 _"_ _-say again, Decepticons inbound to your position."_

Ratchet dimly recognized the voice on the line, but real memory of them was lost in a battlefield haze. He'd patched them up before probably. It didn't matter now.

"That's the personnel carrier ahead of us," the pilot said, "Talking to the ground base."

"How far out are we?" Ratchet asked.

"About a hundred and sixty hours," the pilot replied, "Hundred and fifteen if we burn the engines."

"And the carrier?" Ratchet asked.

The pilot checked some information in the onboard computer, then some readings, "About two hours."

"How many soldiers on the ground?"

The pilot shrugged, "Depends on how many ships made it all the way out here. We know of at least two that were intercepted before they made landing, both personnel. You know how ships go missing. You never know if they made it but couldn't get off the ground again, or if they got into trouble with asteroids or if 'Cons ambushed 'em."

Ratchet didn't need to ask how many Decepticons a cruiser, the most likely 'Con ship to be out this far, could carry. Decepticon cruisers were larger than Autobot vessels for the most part, and you could really pack vehicons in. Vehicons were somewhat new to the Decepticon ranks, but the advantage they lent because of their sheer numbers was a damning one for the Autobot army.

It would be nice to think the Autobots were simply too ethical for the equivalent of vehicons, but the reality was simply that they hadn't the resources.

"There's nothing we can do," Ratchet realized aloud.

They were too far out and, even if they'd been closer, the cargo ship couldn't put up much of a fight. It also wasn't as if they were just carrying cargo. They were carrying energon. The Autobots needed it not only to power their weapons, but to stay alive at all. Above all else, energon must not be allowed to fall into Decepticon hands. Even were that not the case, any battle would be over by the time they arrived.

 _"_ _Correction,"_ said the voice on the radio, _"_ _Decepticons are not inbound. Say again, not inbound. That ship that just landed is_ _ **not**_ _an Autobot vessel. It has been commandeered by Decepticons. Say again, that is a Decepticon controlled vessel."_

There had so far been no acknowledgment from the base, or else they were too far out to pick it up. Ratchet knew that the weather on Earth might be affecting the LDT. This ship wasn't just carrying him and cargo, but materials and plans for improved weatherproofing for bots and equipment. If the LDT was down, the bots on the ground would hear nothing from the ship trying to warn them, even if it was in orbit. Expecting more Autobots and energon to cache, the bots on the ground would be entirely unprepared for the ambush. Ratchet had seen the results of such ambushes before.

"By the Allspark," Ratchet whispered, "They'll be massacred."

"You said it yourself, Doc," the pilot said, "Nothin' we can do to help."

"The question now is," the co-pilot interjected, speaking for the first time, "what do we do?"

"What do you mean?" Ratchet asked.

Then he got it. If the Earth base was overrun or destroyed, there was not only no point in trying to land there, there was very good reason not to. They would be flying a ship load of energon right into Decepticon hands.

"How much fuel?" the pilot asked the co-pilot.

"Not enough to make it back to Cybertron, if that's what you're thinking."

"No point in that," Ratchet said shortly, "We have nothing to go back to."

"What about one of the outposts?" the pilot inquired.

The co-pilot checked some figures, then shook his head gravely, "It's either Earth or nothing."

"Well," the pilot said, "That answers that. Earth it is."

"Great Cybertron," Ratchet cursed.

* * *

 _"_ _-Say again, that is a Decepticon controlled vessel."_

A string of curses escaped Bumblebee as he started down from the LDT, heading for ground level. Even as he did so, he tried to raise Axle on the short-distance radio. Under an ideal setup, an LDT would relay signals to short-distance receivers on the planet that were set to that frequency, but this was not the ideal setup, and there was no relay system.

Bumblebee doubted he could overtake the Autobots, they had too great a head start on him. In fact, he didn't know what drove him to go. It wasn't instinct to run into a battle. Not when he was the only one left at base, the only one who would be able to report what had happened. He was a Scout, reporting was his job. But not today. Today, some other compulsion was in the driver's seat.

As he dropped to the ground, transforming and launching himself in the direction the other Autobots had taken, he could hear that his warning would come too late. Already the sound of blaster fire filled the air, echoing through the canyon walls and lighting the graying desert sky.

Axle's voice came over the radio, _"Stay at base! There's nothing you can do here, Scout! Stay put!"_

But Bumblebee did not heed him, switching the radio off. For the first time in his nearly blameless career, Bumblebee refused to run when he was told to. In his mind flashed all of the things he had lost or given up for this war. Friends, family, the right to choose, his voice, all of it. He'd given everything, and still Cybertron was dead. He couldn't bear to give up anything more. If the Autobots based on Earth were to die, Bumblebee would die with them.

Taking into account the distance and terrain, the number of Decepticons that could have stowed away on the Autobot ship, the number of Autobots stationed on Earth, and the nature of the ambush, Bumblebee calculated that it would probably be all over before he ever got there. A fight like that would last seconds, it would take minutes for him to arrive. But he didn't care. Not today.

He was through running away.


	16. Chapter 15

The Scout had seen the results of battle before. The sharp tang of spilled and burnt energon, smoking metal and expended blaster energy laced the air. Bodies scattered in various positions, shot, stabbed, ripped apart. But this, this was by far the worst Bumblebee had seen, made all the worse by his having known these Autobots. Even if he didn't get along with them or particularly like them... he still knew them. It stunned him how quickly he'd bonded with these Autobots who were practically strangers.

Bumblebee forced his tremors to subside and stepped into the battlefield. The ground was ripped and torn, flora and fauna alike had been blasted to pieces in the skirmish. This area was dead. The war of Cybertron had come to Earth. Would Earth die too for this bloody war?

 _Stop thinking. Just do your job._

Bumblebee tried not to think of the names to go with the faces and various body parts he found, tried to only do a headcount. He knew how many had been on the ground.

 _Just count them and move on. Don't think, don't feel, just go from one to the next._

For all the disadvantage they'd suffered due to surprise, the Autobots had given as good as they got. It was somewhat difficult to do a headcount, because the fighting had been close. Decepticon bodies mingled with Autobots, and in death all looked similar at a first glance. That was especially true now their paint had been scratched and scorched, their chassis cracked and broken. Without light and life, without color or form, it was hard to identify a shell.

Identification had to be done. Bumblebee had to know that there was no one left. He had to be sure everyone here was dead, as much as he had to make sure that everyone was here. It would later be his duty to report on the death toll, but right now it was very personal.

He moved cautiously at first, aware that there might well be survivors, Decepticons lying in wait just in case more Autobots showed up. But it gradually became evident to him that, if there were any Decepticons left, they were not waiting around. Either they assumed they'd gotten all the Autobots based here, or else they were too badly damaged from the fight to risk another. Either was believable. If Bumblebee had not been conducting repairs back at base, he would have been here. And self preservation being the first law of nearly all Decepticons, it would not be at all surprising if they'd gone off to lick their wounds after a battle such as this.

From up close, the damage to the ship was obvious and extensive. The Autobots to whom this ship had belonged had not given her up without a fight. In fact, it looked like they'd tried to destroy their own ship rather than let it fall into the hands of the Decepticons. They had known what it would be used for, and had given their lives to try and stop that from happening. But somehow the Decepticons had managed to salvage the wreck, and patch it back together enough that a look at it from a distance made it appear that the damage was environmental, rather than the results of a pitched battle.

The ship would never fly again. In fact, she'd plowed into the side of the canyon, and seemed to be creaking on the last of her frame supports, on the verge of collapsing into a pile of twisted metal, all but unrecognizable as what she had once been. Small wonder that no survivors, if indeed there were any, had taken refuge within the ship. The ship was done for, there was no shelter there.

Looking across the former field of battle as the dust slowly settled on it, Bumblebee knew that this was to be the first Cybertronian mass grave on Earth, a place where so many had fallen so quickly that it was simply impossible to pay proper respect to each individual. There were many such sites on Cybertron. Too many. In fact, there had been times Cybertron had felt like a single mass grave. The silence that hung over such places was as pervasive as it was oppressive.

Bumblebee shook his head fiercely. This battle was over. But the war wasn't. These Autobots were dead. But what they had lived for, fought for, and died for... it was still worth fighting for.

At least, that's what Bumblebee told himself. He'd told himself that a thousand times. But somehow, he just couldn't bring himself to believe it this time. He was tired. He might be a machine, but he was also a living being. And the living part of him had had enough.

Defeated without having even fought, Bumblebee turned to go back to the empty camp. He didn't have a reason for doing so. Nobody was there. Nobody was going to be there. He'd forgotten about the voice on the radio, and even if he had remembered, he didn't know it came from a ship that was even now heading for Earth. Even if he had known, he might not have cared.

Bumblebee had defied orders, pushed the limits of his speed to get here, and all of it was for nothing. There was nobody left to save, nothing left here to fight for. All that remained was Death, stalking like a vulture among the corpses, recalling the sparks of the dead to the place from whence they'd come.

A terrible weight descended on him as he realized that he was once again alone. Worse, even if no Decepticons had escaped, there would be more coming. For the moment, he was the last of his kind, the only Autobot stationed on this farthest flung planet who yet lived. There was no one else to prevent the Decepticons from coming here and ransacking Earth for their own purposes. Earth was defenseless.

Bumblebee had sworn an oath to serve, and that meant protecting what he'd been sent to guard. But could he truly be expected to do that alone? It didn't even seem real. It was the sort of thing Primes could do, but a mere Scout, defend Earth all by himself? Impossible.

The drive out to the battlefield had seemed long, even though it wasn't. Though it was the same length to get back, it now felt like an interminable distance. Every inch traveled felt like a betrayal. It was wrong that he was returning to base alone. It was wrong he did not avenge the dead. It was wrong he'd simply left the corpses where they'd fallen. It was wrong he hadn't buried them. It was wrong that the Autobots lay with Decepticons in death. It was wrong that they were dead. It was wrong that Bumblebee had not died with them. It was wrong, all of it, and he couldn't do a damned thing about it.

Nothing except what he'd always done. Move on, and not look back. His body moved on, his mind told it that it must, but his spark was torn, and could not do the same so easily.

It had been bad enough to walk through the graves of Cybertron, to know that brave Warriors had fallen, and with them the hopes of the Autobots had sunk lower, the fate of Cybertron darkening with each death until it was black all through. But it was still something else to walk among dead whom he had known. Whose faces he had recognized, whose voices he had answered to.

Bumblebee had liked Axle, had tolerated Throttle, had been aware of all the rest. But Jax... he knew now, too late, that the powerful fear of and anger towards Jax he had felt had been because of something deeper than a realization of what Jax was becoming. It had come from who Jax had been to him. It was hard for him to believe, though once he realized it he knew it to be true, that Jax had been his friend. And so it was that the death of the Autobot he had been prepared to obliterate to protect what he had been sent to guard was the one that hit the hardest, most painful blow to his spark.

The death of a stranger, however great a hero, is as nothing to the death of a friend, however poor a coward.

However, in the cruel way of war and life, there was no time now for Bumblebee to grieve. As he arrived at the base camp, he realized fully that not all of the Decepticons had been destroyed. Drawn by the signal of the LDT, the Decepticons who had survived the battle had cut a straight course for the base. They had raided it of everything of value, most particularly any energon they were able to find. Everything else they had destroyed beyond repair, including the LDT.

Much as he would have denied it had anyone asked, Bumblebee had begun to feel that this camp was home. But more than that, he realized something else: Axle and the others had headed Northeast first, then angled back towards the South, where the cruiser had crashed. Bumblebee had followed the same course. That was because the river and human settlements were on a direct line between the two. By habit almost as much as anything, they had avoided the humans. But the Decepticons would not have done that.

Bumblebee knew the humans would have tried to defend themselves, defend their young, rather than flee, even in the face of something like the Decepticons. It had happened before. The one human he'd had direct contact with had attempted to drive him away.

For once, Bumblebee had no regard for the living things in his way. For so long, he'd practiced moving from place to place without disturbing plants and barely upsetting the wildlife. But it was forgotten in an instant. Speed was paramount. The fact was, Bumblebee wasn't really thinking at all.

He'd let himself fall into old habits the moment he realized what had happened. What he had allowed to happen. He put everything that defined him as living in a box, and let the machine take over. He couldn't afford the emotions of a moment before. He couldn't.

Though the objective of a Scout was to go unnoticed, there were times when it was wholly unavoidable. And, if you found yourself in the situation of having been discovered, you were usually outnumbered. Close combat tactics needed to be fast, efficient. No messing around. Scouts were notoriously "uncivilized" when it came to battle.

A chink in the armor was an opening for a hand to reach in and grab some circuitry, vulnerable joints were the perfect place for a well placed close range shot or the insertion of a blade. Optics, though desirable targets, were often deep set in the head, too protected. The spark chamber was the ideal attack point. Weak armor could be pried off, loose armor could be circumvented. Being small and lightweight, Bumblebee lacked the power to simply rip off limbs as a rule, though a proper twist at the joining point between head and body would do the job even without monstrous power behind it.

Bumblebee didn't think these things out. His mind flashed with images, memory and imagined, each clear-cut and well defined. He knew what he was going to do. And too, he knew that anger lay just beneath the cold surface. He had to keep it in check, had to push it down. Anger would make him reckless, and he would make mistakes. In this profession, you didn't get more than one of those. And too, he knew that releasing all that anger would be the biggest mistake of all. Once the genie was released, it would never fit back in the bottle. Bumblebee knew too well how Rogues were made.

When he came to the river, he saw that his worst fears had been realized. Both settlements had been obliterated, every human trampled like scrap beneath the feet of the Decepticons. Killed without care or effort, murdered simply for being a minor inconvenience that got in the way. Any control he had over his rage slipped in that moment. He would kill them for what they'd done. Kill them all.


	17. Chapter 16

_**Part 3 – Hope Remains**_

 _"_ _For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas... This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life."  
-_ _ **Dune**_ _ **(Frank Herbert)**_

* * *

Ratchet's first moment on Earth was every bit as wretched as he'd imagined.

The pilot had proven on the landing that he was a Warrior first and a pilot second, demonstrating in a glorious shower of sparks and tearing of the landing gear exactly why nearly all Autobots were confined to the ground, while Decepticons often took to the air. It wasn't so much a matter of technology as it was biology. Almost without exception, Autobots were awful at flying, plain and simple. Ratchet had no explanation for this, nor did any other medic who had any credibility. The cargo vessel was to be dismantled and its parts used for building materials anyway, so it didn't matter much. That was why it had carried so little fuel, there was precious little of that, and the Autobots could not afford extra for a ship that wasn't supposed to come back. It left little margin for error, but that was a restrictive fact of existence for all Autobots these days.

The two Warriors, Diff and Rim, gawked at the landscape. Of course they'd been told about Earth, as much as anyone, but it was clear that they had either not understood or not believed what they'd been told. They'd crashed smoking into a forest, and were surrounded by trees taller than they were, not counting the ones they'd flattened with the ship on the way in.

"What kinda whacked out radio towers are those?" Rim asked, staring at the trees.

"Really bad ones," Diff replied, having tried repeatedly on the way in to try and contact anyone on the ground, only to receive static as the single, consistent reply.

"They're not towers," Ratchet grunted, "They're trees."

"Those?" Rim's optics shifted and widened, " _Those_ are _trees_?"

"I thought stuff on Earth was supposed to be small," Diff remarked.

"Most of it is," Ratchet replied gruffly, "So watch where you step."

Practicing what he preached, Ratchet stepped away from the wreckage, and marched off in the direction their readings had indicated the camp would be in. He didn't know if anyone would be there, but of course they had to check. Two Warriors and a Medic wouldn't last long on a planet the Decepticons were conquering, especially with nothing but a hold full of energon and some rather experimental medical supplies. They could use more hands, but what they really needed was additional materials. Energon was powerful and necessary stuff, but it took the right equipment to convert it into whatever form was needed for a given purpose. Equipment the cargo vessel did not have.

There would be time for gawking later. Right now, priority one was survival.

Responsive to the authority granted him by seniority, the two Warriors followed Ratchet's lead meekly, though they frequently slowed or stopped to stare at something that caught them by surprise. In truth, almost everything on Earth surprised them. Ratchet was less surprised, because he'd understood the information he'd been given. He'd been better prepared. But, more importantly, he was very old. He'd seen much in his time, so there was very little that could startle him enough to distract him from the all-important business of surviving.

He was good at surviving. It was how he'd lived so long, despite the violence of Cybertron, which had been war-torn since before Megatron came to power. In fact, some pessimists (such as himself) would argue that there had been war since before Megatron even existed. Even Ratchet would agree however, that there was a depth of corruption in the spark that had turned from light to darkness that made for a greater evil than the spark that had been dark to begin with. So many Decepticons had chosen their path at the start, yet it was Megatron, who had become Decepticon by slow degrees of his own, knowing volition who led them ever deeper into darkness now. Many Decepticons had sunk into the dark before they really knew what they'd done. Megatron had calculated every step down into the Pit, believing all the while that he was ultimately in control, that there was no power greater than he. Likely he would realize only too late that the door back to the light had closed behind him forever.

If he ever realized it. Making that realization would require his acknowledgment of some higher power than himself, that he'd made mistakes, that he had made choices which had not only had outward consequences, but that had left their eternal mark upon his spark. Ratchet did not believe he would ever do that.

* * *

Diff had landed the ship badly, but his aim had been true. They'd crashed down right where they were supposed to. It made for about an hour's walk to the base, but when you were dealing with ships making their landing on fumes, that was about as close as you wanted them to be, especially if they were carrying a load of energon, which could be provoked into exploding fairly easily, especially in its unrefined state. It was actually a lot closer than Ratchet would have recommended, but nobody had asked him.

As they approached the camp, the Warriors finally got their act together. They spread out, and scouted the area for either Decepticons or any traps left behind by them. The radio silence even on their arrival said this camp probably wasn't in Autobot hands any longer. But the quiet told Ratchet without his needing to wait for Diff or Rim to finish that there was no one here. While the young Warriors kept checking the perimeter, Ratchet continued on into the canyon and the base.

There were no bodies here, nor any evidence that there had been. But the destruction was extensive, and told a story of its own. The Decepticons had ransacked the place, destroying whatever they did not take for themselves. Such had been the Decepticon way for eons. It was not enough to take, they had to also obliterate. It was militarily sound, but Ratchet knew that was not the reason they did it. They did it simply because they enjoyed it, not just the feel of metal crumbling under their onslaught, but also the knowledge of the way the Autobots would feel when they returned to a ruined base. It wasn't enough to know that their enemy would be demoralized by it, the Decepticons had to actively revel in that knowledge. The suffering of their enemies was their reward for a job well done.

"They took whatever wasn't nailed down," Diff reported as he and Rim rejoined Ratchet, "Burned the rest," he swore, clearly as upset and angry about this as the Decepticons would have wanted.

"These were just things," Ratchet replied calmly, "Things can be replaced or rebuilt, if you know how."

Diff flinched at this, and stared at the ground, feeling chastised. As well he might. Young as he and Rim were, it was time the both of them started learning the psychology of warfare, not just the physical nature of it. The two of them were inexperienced, trained as Warriors but having previously served only as guards for compounds far from the front-lines. They hadn't been in the thick of it. Or at least, they had not been there enough times to have really learned what it meant. Unfortunately, it was the nature of war that they would not be given much time to learn all they needed to know. Few soldiers ever got second chances to learn lessons. You got it right the first time, or the war destroyed you.

And, sometimes, even if you got it right, you still paid the dearest cost for it. _That_ was war.

"The other ship," Ratchet said, moving on, "Where did it land?"

Diff consulted the readings he'd taken using the sensory equipment of the cargo vessel on the way in, and pointed in a direction, "A few miles that way."

"Very well," Ratchet said after a moment's thought, "You and Rim get back to the cargo ship. Unload that energon, and secure it. I'll check out the crash site."

"But, Doc," Diff protested, "The 'Cons might still be there."

"I highly doubt that, Differential," Ratchet replied, "The Decepticons would never choose to use an Autobot vessel as their base of operations. Their egos would not tolerate it. Besides..." he cut himself off, but Diff noticed and called him on it.

"'Besides' what?"

"Decepticons are not above living in and desecrating an Autobot graveyard," Ratchet said, "But pride and superstition would not allow them to do the same with their own kind. Megatron or one of his generals might be that depraved, perhaps, but no other Decepticons."

"Oh," was all Diff said.

Of course he knew. Ratchet had said there would be a massacre. The silence of the radio confirmed there had been just that. But it hadn't fully dawned on Diff what that meant. At that landing site, there would be a lot of bodies, both Autobot and Decepticon. After any large-scale battle, there was always a place of death that marred the land where it had occurred. Ratchet had to visit that place of death for himself. It was his duty as a medic to find out if there were any injured who might yet be saved, or whose passing might be eased. And it was his duty as an Autobot to know if there were any survivors, either Decepticon or Autobot. But he knew he had no need of protection. Not there. Any who could had already walked away, and they would avoid that place for ages after. Win or lose, such places felt haunted to those who had fought there. Right now, there was no safer place on the planet.

Understanding entered Diff's blue optics, showing he realized all that Ratchet did not say.

"Come on, Rim," Diff said, turning back the way they'd come.

"But-" Rim had missed the lesson, but Diff interrupted.

"Come," he repeated, and this time Rim did as he was told.

* * *

Ratchet had seen the aftermath of many battles. He had treated the wounded, ministered to the dying, and walked through the zone of death after the fighting was through, looking for any signs of life. He'd seen firsthand the will to survive that had kept some going for days or even weeks before they were found when by all rights they should have died instantly. Some lived just long enough to die in the arms of whoever found them. Others lived, maimed beyond the abilities of even the most skilled medic to repair, their ability to fight taken from them even as they continued to live. A precious few lived, and recovered enough to fight another day. Ratchet had long ago decided that to live and fight again was not the cruelest hand that fate could deal them. The cruelest fate was when physically they recovered, but psychologically they'd come unhinged, leaving them living without really being alive, their spark forever lost in a haze of grief and hatred, turning on itself until they either shutdown or went Rogue.

But there were no survivors here. The Autobots had fought hard, and they had taken down many Decepticons. The soldiers of both sides had ensured that any enemy they took down would never rise again. Each killing stroke had been swift and sure, though many had followed up with a second death blow, just in case the first had not been enough, leaving corpses mangled and scorched, some of them ripped apart, the pieces scattered. This was a battle that had been fought in seconds, maybe minutes. The bloodiest battles were always short. They could not be otherwise. Each body possessed only a finite amount of energon, a certain number of drops spilled would kill. The faster and in greater quantity that energon was spilled, the shorter the fight. That was fact.

There had been bloodier battles fought, Ratchet had seen, but that was solely because there had been greater numbers involved. Reading the remains, Ratchet knew that this was a battle fought in desperation. The Autobots had known their backs were against a wall. Ratchet guessed they had understood what this planet meant to the Autobots. It was here they would one day make their final stand. That day was long in the future, but Ratchet knew it was coming. So too had the Autobots who fought here. Accordingly, they had given everything they had, knowing they would not survive, but also understanding that they did it not for themselves, but for those who would come after them.

It was a sacrifice so many had knowingly made, and Ratchet had long ago stopped wondering how many more would have to pay that ultimate price in the name of nothing more than hope. Hope for a future, for a better tomorrow, for a day when the Autobots would at last be victorious. They had no guarantee that was even possible, yet they found the possibility alone to be worth the cost.

Ratchet always felt respect for any who were willing to do this, but it was somehow different here. These were the first to die in numbers knowing that Cybertron, their home, was already dead. That future they hoped for was less likely than ever, and they knew it. Yet still they had not tried to flee, but had gone forth to meet their doom with courage and dignity.

Even faced with this horror, they had still believed in tomorrow.

Though his spark quailed at the thought, Ratchet knew that he must carry on with that belief. He must look upon these mass graves yet one more time, and honor the dead by continuing their fight. Each time that burden became a little heavier, but to put it down and give in to despair would be to dishonor those who had died for that hope. If Ratchet stopped believing, stopped fighting, lay down to die, then the hope these bots had died for would die with them. So long as he could stand, he could not allow that.

No true Autobot could.

As he turned away from the place of death, heading back the way he'd come, Ratchet's radio squawked.

When he answered, he found that it was Diff.

 _"_ _They've found us!"_ he shouted above the din of blaster fire, _"The Decepticons are here!"_


	18. Chapter 17

By the time Ratchet reached the ship, it was already over. Diff and Rim had been taken wholly by surprise, probably assuming the planet was so big it would take the Decepticons time to get to them, assuming they even knew the Autobots were here and therefore not watching as alertly as they should have been. Overconfidence breeds carelessness.

For all that, the two were badly shot up, but still alive. Evidence suggested, however, that they wouldn't be if a third party hadn't intervened. Two Decepticons had been dropped, shot from behind. Both Rim and Diff were together next to the ship, and Ratchet was reasonably sure that's where they'd been when the fighting started. There was only one explanation: somehow despite the brutality of the battle with the Decepticons masquerading as Autobots, at least one Autobot had escaped death.

Diff's report seemed to confirm that, "There were five of them. After those two dropped, the other three got spooked and took off. Something was chasing them."

"Something?" Ratchet queried, "You mean someone?"

"No," Rim shook his head, "It didn't move like us. The way it darted through those," he gestured towards the trees, "It couldn't possibly have been one of ours."

"And it made this noise," Diff added, "Like Basic Speech, but without the words. Just... a kind of a growl. We didn't get a good look at it, it stuck to the trees. But it was yellow, and it was big too. A lot bigger than the things on this planet are supposed to be."

Comprehension struck Ratchet like a blow, and almost involuntarily he whispered, "The Scout."

"The what?" Diff asked.

"You two stay here," Ratchet said, "And watch for more Decepticons."

"Where are you going?" Diff wanted to know.

"To save our Scout from himself."

Diff and Rim looked at each other, but didn't understand. They didn't comprehend that years on Earth had taught the Scout how to move among the trees as naturally as if he was built for it. Career Scouts already moved differently from run-of-the-mill Warriors, and this was the Scout for Earth, Ratchet was sure of it. The Basic Speech confirmed that. Basic was from a time when Cybertronians were simpler lifeforms, developing before they really had language. Though they all knew the sound by instinct, and could understand it clearly with minimal practice, there was only one Cybertronian Ratchet knew of that actually spoke it aloud, and he only because he had no choice.

Ratchet knew this, because he was the Medic the battered, broken Scout had been delivered to when the Decepticons had abandoned him to die. Ratchet was the one who'd been able to save the Scout's life, but not his voice. There had been so many Ratchet couldn't save, and so many like the Scout that he could – but only barely. Ratchet hadn't read the initial reports of the Scout on Earth, instead he'd read the more refined, scientific analysis of that information that had those raw reports had been distilled into by others. But he had read the message to Optimus from the Scout.

He'd heard enough bots on the edge to recognize the tone. The choice of words, the turns of phrase. The Scout had stepped back from a ledge, only to find the ground falling out from under him. Maybe there was no bringing him back after all he'd been through, no way to catch him and stop his fall. But Ratchet had to try. He'd already failed this Scout once. He couldn't let that happen again.

Already it had been a long day of running back and forth for him, something he was no longer used to and had been unprepared for. He was not as immune to the shock of Earth and all its strangeness as he would have liked to be either. Add to that the stress of the long hours leading up to the landing on Earth, where he knew that he would more than likely face death, that the Earth-based Autobots were probably dead and that Decepticons were awaiting them, and this final shock concerning what was seemingly the sole survivor of what might as well have been Armageddon.

Ratchet was near exhaustion, and shaky from it all. As he made his way through the brush, his senses were assaulted by a thousand unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells, all of which impressed themselves urgently upon his consciousness. He needed time to adjust to the environment. Time he did not have.

It was quickly obvious that the Decepticons hadn't been given time either. They'd been here longer than Ratchet, but they'd fled in clear panic. It made them easy to follow, as they crashed through brush and trees, kicking aside boulders in their path, leaving a swath of destruction cleaved through the wilderness. The Scout, meanwhile, left no obvious trace of his passing. Ratchet did not try to detect the trail of the Scout. He knew that if he found the 'Cons, he'd find the Scout.

The only reason he hadn't found the Scout with the two downed 'Cons near the ship was because there had been more fleeing. Their flight had drawn the Scout away. Otherwise... well there was no telling what a Rogue might do. That's why they were so dangerous and so feared. Rogues killed without cause or conscience, and the only reason Ratchet thought the Scout might yet be saved was that he'd left the Autobots still alive when he took off after the Decepticons.

A true Rogue was an indiscriminate killer. The nearest living thing was its first target.

Or perhaps Ratchet was just trying to be optimistic because he wanted the Scout to be okay. Or maybe he had a more selfish reason. Ratchet was a veteran of many battles, from an age when even Medics were also Warriors. But that was far behind him. Surviving assassination attempts was one thing; trying to take on a Rogue Scout with years of experience behind enemy lines was quite another. With the former at least, there was always the possibility of aid from other Autobots. But Ratchet was heading into foreign land on an alien world, chasing a Scout who probably knew the territory as well as he had ever known any part of Cybertron. If he was wrong, and the Scout tried to kill him, Ratchet wasn't sure he stood much of a chance. And no chance at all if he didn't put the Scout down immediately.

Scouts killed quick. They had to.

Less than half a mile from the ship, Ratchet found the first of the Decepticons. This one had been eviscerated, pounced on from the shadows provided for his assailant by the forest, armor punctured in the weak spot just below the chest plate, essential cables and wiring yanked out and ripped in half. It was astonishing how little energon was spilled using this technique, only two or three drops of the precious lifeblood. Death was nearly instant.

Ratchet moved on, leaving the Decepticon where he'd been dropped. The empty shell of the enemy harbored no interest for him, morbid or otherwise. His concern was, as ever, with the living.

He knew he was catching up when he spotted a cloud of dust up ahead.

But when he reached the area, what had stirred the dust had since departed, leaving only a second Decepticon behind for the dust to settle back on. This Decepticon was in worse shape than the other. The kill had been rapid, efficient, but for no apparent reason the Scout had torn this body up more than the first. It wasn't a good sign. Killing was in the job description. Doing so in ways that could be looked on as cruel or cowardly to an ignorant outsider was simply a matter of survival when you were a Scout alone with who knew how many enemies lurking around every corner. But savaging a body already dead? That was not the action of a rational being. There was nothing pragmatic about it.

This second body told of a vicious killer from whom sanity had departed.

Nervously, Ratchet continued. He couldn't go back now. He had to finish what he'd started here.

Dimly he realized it was self preservation as much as anything. If the Scout had indeed gone Rogue, now might be the only chance Ratchet would have to find him, and to stop him. If he lost the Scout now, the Rogue might come back later to finish him and the other Autobots off. That's what Rogues did. They killed whoever, whenever and wherever they could. It was as if they forgot how to do anything else. They were not Autobots or Decepticons, but servants of Death, and Death alone.

Ratchet was scared, of course. Anybody in their right mind would be. Everyone knew there was something terrible and strange in the fractured nature of a Rogue. Autobot and Decepticon alike feared them, and had been known to temporarily set aside their differences to destroy them.

But a part of him didn't believe, couldn't accept. Not until he knew for certain could he give up on the Scout. If there was any chance, any chance at all, of bringing him back to who he was, Ratchet had to give it to him. The Scout deserved that much at least, after all he'd gone through.

It was pure chance that he heard the crack of a fallen branch. To a human, it would have sounded like a gunshot. To a being the size of Ratchet, accustomed to large sounds, it was barely noticeable, especially given all the other strange noises assaulting his audio receptors. But instinct honed by eons of battling just to survive froze him in his tracks, and snapped his optics in the direction from whence the sound had come. Despite this, it was almost too late.

A shriek of metal heralded the arrival of a body, which came flying through the trees aiming for him. Despite the protests of old, abused joints, he ducked down swiftly, and the assault missed. A fierce snarl made him flatten to the ground as a flash of yellow shot past him to land bare feet away from him. Near-black eyes turned in his direction, a harsh squall of electronic noise shrieked out of what Ratchet could only faintly recognize as an Autobot. The Scout.

His spark thudded in his chest as the other gazed upon him with almost predatory hunger. The Scout crouched as an insecticon might, defensive and alert. If he attacked, would Ratchet have time to shoot back? No, there would only be time for hand-to-hand. He was bigger than the Scout, stronger too, he was sure. But would that be enough? Did he want it to be?

Ratchet wasn't sure if he should speak, or simply stay still. If he moved, would the Scout kill him? If he tried to speak reason, would the Scout be set off before he could hear the words? If he didn't move, would the Scout take that as permission to move in for the kill? So much was at stake, and Ratchet knew so little of this Scout. It came to him dimly that little was known about Rogues either. There simply was never time. Inevitably, the need to destroy a Rogue before it caused too much damage outweighed any curiosity over exactly what psychological glitch was at work. Rogues were too dangerous to study, particularly in the middle of a world-consuming war.

For long seconds, Ratchet and the Scout simply stared, crouched and motionless as the dust settled around them, each gazing at the other, neither comprehending the other, both too scared to move, each knowing the wrong move would lead inevitably to his death, neither knowing what would be the wrong move and what would be the right, each knowing yet not knowing, and so not moving, terrified that the slightest motion or sound would break the stillness, end the truce, and begin the bloodshed.

But stillness and silence cannot last forever.

Ratchet said, "I know you."


	19. Chapter 18

Bright drops of azure clung furtively to the Scout's right hand, energon from those he had slain.

Since the deaths of Axle and the others, Bumblebee had done nothing except hunt the Decepticons. He had seen the cargo ship coming in, and had heard the call on the Autobot communications frequency. He had not answered, though he didn't know why. What he did know was that the Decepticons had seen the ship land just as he had, and that they would be coming. The same thing had happened several days earlier with another ship. It had been his intention then to get there first, but he hadn't managed it. He'd been faster this time, but not quite as fast as he would have liked, because the attack was already underway.

After that... he hadn't really known what he was doing. It was just motion, violence, a series of moments viewed as if they had happened to someone else, as if he had been merely a spectator. But the lifeblood on his hand told a different story. It said that he had killed.

Hazily, he remembered chasing three Cybertronians into the forest. Reluctantly, his memory told him that he had killed two of them, that they'd never even had a chance to defend themselves. He had believed they were Decepticons, but now he stood faced with what he thought must be the third, but this was an Autobot. The thing that scared him most was not that he might have killed two Autobots without realizing it, not that he'd been so far gone he couldn't tell friend from foe, but the fact that some part of him wanted to kill this Autobot standing before him now.

There was no reason for it, in truth he didn't even feel any particular anger or hatred. Just a cold numbness, a quiet voice in his head that simply whispered: _Kill him._

The energon in his veins felt like it was turning to ice, as that quiet voice reminded him of all the traitors he'd been sent to weed out of the Autobot ranks, how they had all seemed like upstanding, reliable sorts until he uncovered proof of their treachery. Ruthlessly, his memory pitched in and brought to the forefront that night when he had stopped Jax, and the voice pointed out that had been a crossing point, where an Autobot chose to become a Decepticon, because of his own arrogance.

 _ _They are all like that,__ the voice seemed to say, __Sooner or later, they will all turn on you. They will all try to destroy you. But not if you destroy them first. Kill them. Kill them all.__

It sounded easy. It sounded simple. Beyond any reason, Bumblebee knew that killing was a heated affair, and that doing it would melt the internal frost that seemed to be creeping steadily towards his spark. There was also nothing in the moment of a kill but death. In that moment, he'd forget the doubt, the horror, the fear, the blame. There would be nothing but the crush of metal, the splash of energon, the sound of a spark stopping. No reason, only a burst of violence, followed by blessed silence.

Death was the end of all things. Funny, that didn't sound so bad right now. All the struggling, all the fighting, all the shedding of lifeblood, and the only thing they had to show for it was a dead planet, and a valley on an alien world filled with their dead, dead who would never be able to go home.

If he did this, he knew the fear and horror would fade from his mind. There would be no turning back. The madness felt welcoming. After everything, it felt right. But then a new voice spoke, a voice that wasn't inside him. A voice that was real, which had weight. The voice belonged to the Autobot Bumblebee now faced, and the words he spoke were perhaps the only ones he would have listened to now, the only words which still meant anything.

He said, "I know you."

The three words hit with the impact of a shot, and it felt like something in Bumblebee's head exploded. Physically, he remained motionless, but inside he was reeling, the ice inside shattered like glass, spinning all through him, cutting deep slashes as it spun itself out. It was all just in his head, but the pain felt real, as if those words had actually injured him, as if the internal cold had somehow become external, the broken shards within no longer metaphorical but all too real.

His mind reached back, across the boundaries of time, through the bloody fields of distant memory. Beyond the killing and the death and the loneliness and the pain, past the orders of the Prime which had sent him to this place which had been forsaken by the Allspark, through the dark shadows that had hung on him like a weight and nearly drowned him after the loss of his voice, and the thick fog in which his spark had wandered, lost and frightened, hurt and angry during that time. There, there he found the truth of the words. And he realized just who it was that he had considered killing.

Bumblebee flinched.

"I remember..." the Medic said, slowly easing towards Bumblebee as he spoke in soothing tones using a voice never designed to sound gentle, "I remember wishing I could have done better... could have done more. That I could have... made you whole again."

The wildness that had taken hold of Bumblebee wanted to run. The killer in him screamed at him to move in, to finish the kill he'd started. It felt like the signals were being sent to his limbs, but they only twitched, and he remained rooted where he stood, unable to move.

"What you endured was more than anyone should ever have to," it wasn't clear if the Medic was speaking of the recent past, or something from longer ago, "Especially alone."

Bumblebee's optics rotated, and he made a final, weak-sparked attempt to flee, managing to stumble back with one foot, while the other refused to move. Then he gave it up. He didn't even know what he was trying to run from, or fight off. A moment ago, reason had not seemed to matter. But the moment had passed, and the Scout, the survivor, the fighter, the soldier, had reasserted control. Any action taken without purpose was a waste of energy. Energy that could be put to better use.

The strange paralysis that had held him was broken, and he slowly began to straighten up from his crouch, eyes on the Autobot Medic, lest his actions be misinterpreted as hostile. The Medic stopped talking, and stopped moving towards him, but didn't seem to feel threatened. The possibility of their killing each other seemed to have gone by, and now Bumblebee didn't understand why it ever had been a possibility in his head. He felt guilty for what he had thought of, what he had intended, even though he had not acted on the impulse in the end. It scared him to know that was in him, and so near the surface.

So easily could he lose sight of the reason for killing, and simply kill because he could. So easily could the loyalty he'd thought was such a part of him be corrupted and turn to hatred. So easily could reason depart, leaving only madness in its wake. That scared him. It scared him a lot.

But after the fear came the wave of exhaustion, as the trauma of what had happened- what he had almost done, what he had lost, not just in the last few days, but over a number of years, before he'd ever even come to Earth- hit him. He let out a low buzz that didn't have words, was more a moan than anything, and his knees suddenly buckled under him.

He would have fallen, but the Medic caught him on the way down. They both dropped to their knees, but the Medic kept Bumblebee from falling all the way to the ground. Overcome with weariness at the horrors of what he'd seen, where he'd been, what had happened, what he'd done began to settle over him, Bumblebee started to shake, burring incoherently. The Medic just held him, and let him go through it.

So many would have tried to placate him by saying it was okay, or that he was safe now, or that it was over, or any one of a hundred other phrases that were equally untrue and ultimately meaningless because they were nothing more than an attempt to stifle the grief that seemed to pour out of him with each wrenching shiver, to stop the tumultuous flood of jumbled, mixed together emotions for which there could be no name, and for which there could be no words.

In his silence, the Autobot Medic showed that he understood. He'd been here before. Not to Earth, perhaps. But here. Drowning in this rage and fear and pain, not even really knowing why, or which tiny sorrow it was that had been the last straw, which moment of agony had been the one where he'd lost his grip and started to fall. A gulf had stood between Bumblebee and Axle, Throttle, Jax and the others, but he sensed that it didn't exist between himself and the Medic.

Separated by time and space, Bumblebee had at times half wondered if he was even still really an Autobot. Never more than when there had been actual Autobots here with him, and still he'd felt alone. The Medic had not been here on Earth until today, and he was older than Bumblebee by eons, but it felt like there was no distance between them. He understood, as none of the others had. When he finally spoke, it was not to deny the power of what had overcome Bumblebee inside, but to reaffirm the bond between two Autobots, two soldiers on the same side in an endless war.

"You're not alone," he said quietly, "Not anymore."

Bumblebee looked up at him, and the Medic met his gaze forthrightly. Dimly, Bumblebee was aware of the fact that the Medic's optics were strange. They were just a slightly different color from most Autobots, and constructed differently too. They were not like Bumblebee's optics but, like Bumblebee, the Medic saw the world differently from how others saw it. Not only on a psychological level, but on a physical one. He had not only been to war, it had changed him on a fundamental level.

Like Bumblebee, he could not be as he was before. Perhaps nobody could.

Finally Bumblebee found his words again, __{I couldn't save them. Any of them,}__ he whispered, then his damaged voice took on a note of hysteria, __{I killed them. All of them. All but one. That one got away.}__

"There will be more," the Medic said, seemingly almost against his will.

Bumblebee shuddered, and began to make pitiful moaning noises that didn't quite translate into anything. Before the Medic, he felt no shame in making the agonized sound. He knew the Medic had not only heard it before, but made it himself. He had lost family to this war too. And he too had nearly gone mad from the grief. He knew what it was to be alone. He understood.

 _{It's my fault they're dead. I knew the danger was there and I did nothing.}_

"You are just one," the Medic reminded him gently, knowing it needed to be said even though Bumblebee knew it as fact in his head, and even though his spark would not accept it as the truth, "You couldn't have made a difference."

 _ _{Never again.}__

"Don't be foolish," the Medic said, "You know full well that is not a promise you can keep."

Bumblebee snarled, his eyes darkening as he repeated, __{Never again.}__

* * *

In the days that followed, Ratchet relied heavily on Bumblebee. Diff and Rim had been badly injured in the battle with the Decepticons. Adjusting to all the peculiarities of Earth was hard enough for them, they were young and it was not their job to come up with medical solutions to organic induced problems with limited equipment.

Ratchet abhorred Earth from the first, and time did little to dull this first impression. He hated the pouring rain, the scouring wind, the burning sun and the gritty dust, all of which threatened finish and armor, not to mention more sensitive places beneath. The plans he had brought to solve these minor difficulties either required equipment that had been destroyed in the raid on the base, or else they didn't work. He spent most of his time when not tending to his patients trying to resolve these issues.

Bumblebee, in the meantime, patrolled for Decepticons. At first, it was only the survivors of that first battle, now ragged and frightened, their ranks depleted and their confidence shattered. But in time more Decepticons came, looking for the energon they knew had been brought here.

By then, Rim and Diff had recovered sufficiently to unload the cargo ship and conceal its contents. The Autobots had known the Decepticons would be back, and in greater numbers. The cargo ship had provided not only shelter, but adequate repair stations, a computer and database for Ratchet to work with, and -though its transmitter was hopelessly mangled- a way to hear any Autobot radio chatter in the area. But when the reinforcements for the Decepticons arrived, they had to abandon it. Regardless of the advantages it presented, the fact remained that the Decepticons knew where it was.

Again, they relied on Bumblebee, whose intimate knowledge of the land kept them several steps ahead of the searching Decepticons. And the Decepticons _were_ hunting them, not just for the energon they possessed, but because -whenever they weren't running- the Autobots were finding ways to strike back. Using Bumblebee's expertise as a Scout, and Ratchet's knowledge of Wrecker-esque tactics, the few Autobots organized and executed missions to confound, maim or kill the Decepticons.

The Autobots were lacking in many areas, but one thing they did have access to was explosives. Raw energon was good fuel, and it didn't take a lot to make one helluva explosion. The Decepticons were easily lured in by energon, and often pitched camps near the stuff if they found it. Setting up traps ahead of time, or slipping in and rigging something while the Decepticons rested was the primary tactic of the Autobots now.

But as Ratchet, Diff and Rim relied on Bumblebee, so too did Bumblebee rely on them.

Ratchet provided more than merely physical repairs to the damage Bumblebee sustained during one of these missions; he found ways to heal old wounds inflicted by the Earth itself, and developed ways to prevent it from happening again. Since he had come to Earth, rust had been Bumblebee's chief enemy. Ratchet's place was no longer the field of battle, he knew it and the others knew it, but his value to them was inestimable, beginning with the defeat of rust, and continuing with ways to increase energon efficiency, allowing the Scout and Warriors to fight harder for longer with less energon consumption.

Energon was the basis for all of their weapons, particularly explosives, as well as being their lifeblood, and so they had to use it as sparingly as they possibly could. It was not a resource they could replace. They had no idea when more Autobots might be coming, or even if there were any Autobots left.

It was a strange hierarchy that was in place. Medics were not granted military rank, standing apart from it, able even to command a Prime when it came to medical matters. They did not lead armies. Scouts were below Warriors in rank, and commanded no one. Yet Diff and Rim deferred to Bumblebee, making him effectively Ratchet's right hand. All four were wise enough to realize that military law had little place here. Here, experience counted. Ratchet and Bumblebee had it; Diff and Rim did not. Moreover, Diff and Rim had sustained damage in that first attack that would not heal on its own, because it was mechanical damage, and Ratchet -for all the medical wonders he was capable of- lacked the facilities necessary to effect those repairs. Bumblebee lacked only a voice; Diff and Rim suffered limited mobility, and required more energon to fight and fire their weapons.

It was a ridiculous way to fight a war, they all knew, and ultimately victory could not be obtained in this manner. But Ratchet was a survivor of the Great War. He knew the value of holding on one minute longer. Certain romantic types said that was the stuff of heroes. Ratchet knew it to be the creed of the survivor. Just hang on. One more mission. One more hour. One more minute. One more second. If, in the end, help did not come and you found your essence returned to the Well of Allsparks from whence it had come, at least you could say you did your best.

Inevitably, however, there came a time when their best was not enough...


	20. Chapter 19

It was a cold evening at the end of fall, the place was a stretch of land across the upper part of the northern hemisphere of the planet. Humans had begun their imperious march across the world, and their advance had led the Cybertronians ever more into deeper, more remote regions.

The Autobots did so because they had been forbidden to interfere with human matters, a ban that stood even if those who had imposed it no longer did.

The Decepticons had more complex reasoning. One reason was that the Autobots lured them, pretending to have become careless in their concealment and trapping of the energon that all Cybertronians prized so highly. It was like a trail of breadcrumbs, and the Decepticons picked it up at once. But also the Decepticons knew that the losses and damage they suffered from this pitiful group of Autobot survivors was as nothing to the wrath that had come down upon the heads of the first Decepticons to land, and they knew it was a direct result of destroying a human settlement. And too, the Decepticons had orders of their own, the nature of which encouraged discretion.

Humanity thus safeguarded and still well able to be thoroughly ignored, the Autobots and Decepticons were free to continue waging miserable warfare on one another unimpeded.

Often, Bumblebee would lead the Decepticons on a merry chase to buy time for the crippled Diff and Rim to prepare a lethal surprise. There wasn't a Decepticon on Earth Bumblebee couldn't outrun, not only because he himself was fast, but because they lacked experience on Earth terrain.

Sand, rock, mud, open field, cliffs, forests or valleys, Bumblebee knew them all, and could navigate them with efficiency and speed, while the Decepticons crashed noisily and clumsily after him. If they lived long enough, they too would get it figured out. It was Bumblebee's primary objective to ensure that they never live so long, and certainly never managed to report what they'd learned.

At the heart of the battle that day was, as ever, energon. This had come on a cargo ship flown by a Decepticon pilot, whose lack of qualifications as a pilot were more than extensive. Suffice to say he had missed his mark, and hit a mountain on the way down while he was at it. The ship, hundreds of miles off course, carved a neat slice into the land as it crashed, a deep scar that would one day become a lake. The pilot was killed on impact, and an automatic distress beacon activated, one meant for Decepticons, but which the Autobots had learned how to pick up as well.

Bumblebee had seen the ship come in, of course, but the distress beacon made it a race, because it told both factions exactly where it was that the ship had landed. The Autobots didn't know how much energon (if any) the ship might have on it, or what else it might have been carrying, but they knew how much it _could_ have. A combination of weariness caused by energon depletion, and awareness that any significant amount of energon delivered cleanly into Decepticon hands would spell doom for the last of the Autobots on Earth, drove them forth into the fray, into a battle they could not win.

It had been their hope that they should reach the ship before the Decepticons, and to depart before battle should become necessary. But the Decepticons, expecting the ship even before it crashed, were faster. Seeing a dozen of the hated vehicons swarming over the crashed vessel, and knowing more were on their way, Bumblebee's spark quailed at the thought of entering into this fight.

The sixth sense honed in war told him that ahead lay further tragedy, and loss.

But if Diff or Rim -who had come with him- sensed it, they did not behave that way. What they saw, Bumblebee also saw, and that was the fact that so much energon would power Decepticon weapons heretofore unavailable, and add to the technological advantage the Decepticons already possessed.

Where the majority of the tech the Autobots brought had been destroyed, the Decepticons had taken what they wanted, and received more since then. They were building something the likes of which few Autobots had seen firsthand. The Autobots did not know the purpose of the sinister thing the Decepticons were constructing in the stronghold they had taken for themselves in recent days, but they knew that so much energon might be all that was needed to power it.

"We can't let this happen," Diff said, and Rim nodded in silent agreement.

 _{Wait,}_ Bumblebee advised, but the two Warriors ignored him.

Knowingly, for they at last understood what being an Autobot meant, the two Warriors went out to meet Death. Sick at spark, yet knowing they were right, Bumblebee followed them.

By weight of numbers, vehicons lent advantage to the Decepticons. But no three vehicons were equal to even a single Autobot in even combat, and the Autobots had managed to come close unnoticed. When they struck, it was as they had many times observed hawks strike; from above and without warning. The vehicons were down in the ditch dug by the crashed ship, and the Autobots fell upon them from the top of the newly created ridge. In such close combat, there was little play with blasters.

The vehicons lacked great skill, but their freshly upgraded, close-fitted armor had fewer weak points than that of other Decepticons. In fact, they were mostly plating, and getting through that was no easy task. But it was a task the Autobots had gotten very good at, particularly Bumblebee. Rapidly, and literally, they tore into their enemies, and swiftly the first round of battle belonged to them.

But more vehicons came quickly, and those that fell had bought time. When the second wave of vehicons hit, the high ground was now theirs, just as the Autobots had known it would be. Without care for how easily the energon might be set off by a stray shot, the vehicons surrounded and commenced firing on the Autobots. Fortunately, they were disastrously bad shots, and Autobot armor was designed to take such punishment. A well-placed shot would pierce armor, and many ill-placed ones would eventually get through. But not before the Autobots managed to escape their disadvantaged position, and climb up to face the vehicons on equal footing.

Once they did, they could see the vehicons were being followed by other Decepticons, ones smarter and more powerful than simple vehicons. The Autobots had known this was coming their way, had known from the start of the battle that it was one they could not win. And so, in their first assault, they had made their move. While Diff and Bumblebee had concentrated on fighting, Rim had expertly placed IEDs on the energon-laden ship. If the Autobots could not keep the energon, they at least had to keep it out of Decepticon hands.

The three of them did not have to win. They only had to make sure the Decepticons lost. If they did not get out of the area in time, the explosion would kill them. But if they fled too soon and the Decepticons discovered what they'd done, there would be time to circumvent their sabotage.

"It's been an honor, Little Scout," Diff said, as the Decepticons advanced.

 _{We're not done yet,}_ Bumblebee replied.

As if to back his words, Bumblebee broke formation, actually charging the oncoming Decepticons. With their heavier armor, such a run would have been suicide for either Diff or Rim. But Bumblebee ducked, dodged, and used boulders and collapsed vehicons for cover. In the meantime, Diff and Rim finished off the last of the vehicons they were up close and personal with, then broke in different directions to find cover for the coming firefight.

It was not the first such run Bumblebee had made. Diff and Rim had been startled the first time he'd done it, thinking it was a suicide run. But Bumblebee had long-practiced abrupt turns, particularly on Earth. At seemingly the last possible second, he executed a flip transformation and shot off in a direction the Decepticons did not expect. At least, that was the idea, that was how it had worked before.

But this time, just as he was making the turn to transform and get clear, something awful snaked across the ground and wrapped itself around his leg. It pulled him up short, and his own momentum sent him crashing heavily to the ground with a startled buzz.

Without hesitation, Bumblebee kicked out at where he assumed the owner of what he thought had to be a hand would be, and was surprised to find only empty air. He looked back and realized that what had him was a tentacle tinged with purple, its angular possessor several yards farther away than Bumblebee had expected.

 _Soundwave._

The name clanged through Bumblebee's consciousness, striking like a gong in his head. Everyone knew Soundwave, academically speaking. He was Megatron's oldest ally, one of the few survivors who had been there from the start, in the Pits of Kaon. But that wasn't what terrified Bumblebee.

It was memory. It wasn't only Megatron who had inflicted torture on him. The sight of Soundwave sent memories skittering through Bumblebee like scraplets, and shudders rippled through him. What had happened to him had finally started to fade, but now it came back all at once, as if it had been only yesterday that he'd been left for dead. Memories seared into his spark broke to the surface, disabling him as effectively as if he'd been shot. He remembered everything.

"Scout!" Diff's voice cut through the noise in Bumblebee's head, snapping him back into action.

Bumblebee had seldom fired his weapon during the guerrilla campaign of the Earth-based Autobots, for the simple reason that doing so was costly, and he had heretofore been largely able to avoid it. Diff and Rim had likewise avoided blasting anyone or anything, usually being kept out of the field of fire altogether. But now Bee twisted around and fired two quick blasts.

The first missed its mark and struck a vehicon a glancing blow in the shoulder plate. The second found its home in the face of the tentacle-bearing Decepticon that had caught him. In that moment, Bumblebee realized it was not Soundwave, but another Decepticon who had improvised weapons that merely resembled the dreaded tentacle attack of Soundwave. The first clue was that he was too stocky to be Soundwave, but the more important one was that he had been slow enough that Bumblebee's second shot had connected. Soundwave would have dodged such an attack, even if it cost him his hold on Bumblebee's leg. Soundwave knew the first priority in close combat was always avoiding injury, and he was both smart enough and fast enough to have evaded Bumblebee's slightly panicked retaliation.

As it was, however, the Decepticon did not release his hold on Bumblebee, for which he paid a steep price. But it was not all for nothing. Still hampered by the tentacle clinging tenaciously to him, Bumblebee thrashed to free himself as the converging Decepticons shifted their fire from the sheltered Warriors and turned on the exposed and much closer Scout.

Responding to Bumblebee's plight, Diff and Rim both broke cover. Their reasoning was two fold. Firstly, to acquire a better shooting angle. Secondly, to draw attention to themselves, and try to draw fire. They were mobile. Until Bumblebee was free of the tentacle that had grabbed him, he was not.

But what actually saved him was the shortage of energon. The Decepticons that hit him had misjudged the distance, as well as the power needed to punch through his armor. Their attempt to conserve energon in battle was their undoing, as their shots weren't strong enough to break Bumblebee's armor and kill him in a single shot. He took damage from that first volley, but it did not take him out as it would have had the weapons which fired on him been properly calibrated.

He gave the Decepticons no second chance. Realizing that pulling away had only caused the tentacle to tighten its grip, Bumblebee gathered himself and sprang towards the enemy. The tight hold on his leg loosened, it being reflex on the Decepticon's part. Bumblebee's first shot had taken him out of the fight, and the tentacle was working solely on reflex now, not conscious intent. When it let him go, Bumblebee whipped around and reverse himself, launching away from the Decepticons, who were realigning themselves to his new position and apparent attack. Only one of them was quick enough to see what he was doing and take advantage of it before he reached Diff and Rim.

But in this deadly game, one was enough.

Bumblebee didn't so much feel the shot that punctured his armor right below the chest plate at his back, as he was aware of the flash of destructive energy that tore upwards, spreading through his chest, and finally dissipating somewhere in his shoulder on that side. He was aware when he fell, though he was too stunned by the hit to even try maintaining his balance. Vaguely, he knew he was leaking, and he felt a strike of anger at the waste of energon draining into the dirt.

He knew he should get up, even as he knew that time was nearly up. Any second, an explosion would rip through the area, obliterating anyone and anything that had failed to get out of the way fast enough. But he lay, listening to the seemingly distant sound of blaster fire and shouting. He made no move to assist when Diff or Rim (he didn't know which; it didn't seem to matter) knelt beside him, grabbed him and tried to drag him to his feet. He knew they were yelling at him, and he figured they were telling him to get up, that it was time to go, but he couldn't hear them, didn't understand, didn't care.

 _{Just let me go,}_ he said quietly, or maybe he only thought it, _{Just go.}_

Sounds were faint and crackling now, he didn't know if there was a reply. The world had turned to blurry pixels, color and clarity were fading fast. Bumblebee did not think he was dying. He had thought that and been wrong before. If and when he died, it was going to come as a surprise. He knew it could happen at any time, but trying to anticipate when and how he would go was simply a waste.

The world seemed to pulse, to flash blinding white, and then it all went black.


	21. Chapter 20

Cybertron had died a great death. She was magnificent even in her ruin, a metallic orb that had once pulsed with life and light, now a cold and lifeless sphere drifting through the relentless vastness of space, ancient and violent past remembered forever by the charred spires of broken cities, an echo of her glory blown across the dusty, barren land by feral winds.

The light of a living creature can be snuffed out in the barest instant, but Cybertron's death throes had lasted for years. Though a massive exodus had taken place, both Autobots and Decepticons realizing that they must look elsewhere for survival, across her surface war continued to rage, right up to the very end, even though it no longer mattered who won or lost; inevitably all who stayed suffered the same fate as the planet herself. Finally, the violence was put to a final end by the inexorable hand of Death, whose icy fingers closed about the throat of Cybertron, choking off her final breath.

Elsewhere, younger and brighter star systems continued. Lights shone out, piercing the abyssal darkness of space, promising new days and new life. It was towards these distant stars that the Cybertronians marched, their other choice being to die. For all of their power to create and destroy, and the ancient nature of their eternal war against one another; there was nothing they could do to save Cybertron, and the only way to save themselves was to go, leaving -perhaps forever- the planet which had given them life. There was no going back, their home was gone.

Yet some could not, even then, place their need to survive over the longing to stay. Some, both Autobot and Decepticon, remained behind. Not to cover the retreat of their masters, though there were those who did that as well. Some stayed because it was their home, and they chose to die with it rather than set forth into the great unknown, seeking a future that might not even exist.

The vessels that carried the refugees from Cybertron were crowded, the Cybertronian passengers often weak and sick from depletion of their energon reserves, and afflicted with the nameless malady that comes to all who leave a dying world too late. Somehow, in spite of this, Megatron managed to continue his mad campaign, to carry on with his brutal war games, and the last of the primes, Optimus, gathered the resources to respond in kind. He had no choice. If the Autobots did not fight even now, under these extremes, then Megatron would wipe them out.

Victory at any cost had become his creed.

Optimus had left Cybertron with a fleet, but only one ship made it to Earth, and there were precious few survivors aboard her. Space is no kinder to ships than the sea, and the vessel had taken a severe beating, even aside from skirmishes with Decepticon warships. Her occupants were sick and starved of energon, with Earth as their only hope. Earth, rich in energon because of the foresight of both Optimus and Megatron, which had led them to cache energon in huge quantities off of Cybertron.

Earth, farthest from Cybertron, was the last hope.

But landing on Earth was not to bring the relief Optimus and his few had been hoping for. Already Decepticons had been there, and the Autobots who had come first had been unable to drive them away. In fact, there were a mere handful of survivors, subsisting on minimal reserves.

What precious little they had, the Earth-based Autobots laid at the feet of their leader without hesitation. Too wise to take it without question, Optimus learned of the bitter battles waged for this tiny reserve. And too, he learned the fate of the Scout who had been among the first to fight for this world.

* * *

"The damage was extensive," Ratchet told Optimus, "Biologically he's recovered, mechanically I've done all the repairs I can. But we haven't got the energon to revive him."

In a stasis chamber Ratchet had modified into an emergency medical life support system, the Scout was motionless, his eyes black, looking as if he were dead. There was no trace of the physical damage done to him by the shot that had left him comatose, but a lifetime of battle had nonetheless left him with scratches and dents that would never be fully repaired.

"How long?" Optimus asked simply, his surface impassive even as his spark broke for the courageous Scout of whom he had asked so much.

"Decades, I think," Ratchet shrugged, "Time hasn't had a great deal of meaning lately. I kept hoping," Ratchet hesitated for a long second, "I kept thinking... maybe... maybe he didn't survive all that he did... for nothing. I don't know... maybe I just didn't have the bearings to finish what the Decepticons started. Still, it takes power to keep this running, and there were times..." he shook his head, tried to continue, "So many times..." he broke off, but Optimus knew what he did not say.

"I understand, old friend," Optimus said sympathetically.

Ratchet put a hand on the outside of the chamber, sighing with the weariness of the eons, "I suppose now, with more of us... more coming..."

"No," Optimus said firmly, "Not yet."

"But Optimus..." Ratchet's voice was heavy, as it was the side of the argument he didn't want to be on.

"I will find and secure the energon you need," Optimus said when Ratchet trailed off, "I did not send my Autobots here to die."

"No one is suggesting that you did," Ratchet exclaimed, "Look around. If not for you, none of us would be alive today. But you cannot save everyone."

"Perhaps not," Optimus conceded in even tones, "But I can save our Scout."

It was more than the Scout's life in the balance, and of course Optimus knew it. Though that one life would have been sufficient for him to risk his own to save, he knew there was much more at stake. There was the Scout's knowledge. There was his experience. There were his skills, irreplaceable at best. The Autobots were so few in number that the loss of even one could constitute a fatal blow to their ranks. Moreover, the hit to morale already at rock bottom should the Scout die, and should his death be required in this way, not in battle but by the choice to stop supporting his life in order to spare others... the damage that would do was inestimable. It might well be the thing that finally and forever took the last of the fight out of the Autobots. It was the time, the place, and the nature of things that made it so.

That Ratchet himself had been unable to pull the plug on the Scout told how significant his death would be. Ratchet was looked on as callous, certainly he'd seen more than his share of death and made equally that number of hard calls. But he could not do this. Not to the Scout he'd fought so hard to save once. Not the Scout whom he felt even now that he had failed. Losing Bumblebee here and now, in this way, would take the spark right out of the aged Medic.

That Optimus could not allow.

He saw doubt in Ratchet's eyes that it was possible to survive, much less save the Scout, and he could not blame the Medic. Stoically, Ratchet had gone at a task for which he was ill-suited because circumstances demanded it of him. He was not a leader, nor a Warrior, and the bizarre conditions which had forced him to act as both when his true calling was that of a healer had not brought out the best in him. Rather, he had become hard, and perhaps even bitter. But beneath that was only a long-held pain, and unwillingness to believe that he might finally be able to shed the burden he'd carried and return it to its rightful owner. He was afraid to even hope it was possible, because so many hopes had been dashed so ruthlessly for so long, and this even before his assignment to Earth.

In Ratchet's eyes, Optimus saw the souls of all of his Autobots, and he knew that now was a time when he must do for them what all good leaders must in times of tribulation: he must restore their faith in him, give them something to believe in again and help them to regain their lost hope.

All of this was tied up with whether the Scout lived or died.

Before he left, Optimus placed a hand on the chamber, and looked into the Scout's lightless eyes.

"I am sorry, brave Scout," he said gravely, "But I there is more I must ask of you."

"Even if he is restored physically," Ratchet spoke hesitantly, "there is no telling what kind of mental damage might have been done."

Optimus did not respond to this. He could not. Even should he have wanted to, he could not lie to Ratchet about this. Even with the necessary energon, Bumblebee's brain circuits might have been irreparably scrambled. The result could be memory gaps, alterations to his personality or even corruption of all higher functions. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened. Both Ratchet and Optimus had seen Autobots recover from hideous physical injuries, but come back with no memory of their own names. No Medic in the world could fix damage like that.

Ratchet was not trying to convince Optimus not to try, he was merely reminding the Prime that this was a cause that might well be lost. But, though he reminded, the old Medic understood that Optimus, because of who and what he was, would still have to try.

"Take care of him, Ratchet," Optimus instructed, and then turned to stride away.

"Be careful, Optimus," Ratchet whispered after him.

* * *

The other Autobots had wanted to accompany Optimus. They were Warriors, it was their nature to seek after battle. They were Autobots, it was in their spark to aid one another. For reasons of their own, it was their choice to follow Optimus to the end of all things. But he forbade them from following him in this.

As a Prime, he had a reserve of strength and power which they did not. Energon depletion ran rampant through the ranks, both those who had been based on Earth and those who had come so far only to find the situation here was almost the same as the home they had left. They were all too near death to be assets to Optimus in the coming battle.

Besides, the Scout had suffered enough as a consequence of following the orders of Optimus Prime. He did not need to discover the cost of his waking again had been the lives of his brothers. That was a hard thing at the best of times, to survive when others did not. Under these particular conditions, Optimus feared it might be more than Bumblebee could take.

Dangerous as the undertaking was, Optimus anticipated his success alone for more reasons than the mere fact that he _must_ succeed in securing some energon from somewhere or the lives of his Autobots would be forfeit. Something Ratchet had overlooked was the probability that the Decepticons were becoming careless. The Decepticons stationed here had never been the cream of the crop; up until recently there were more strategic and prestigious postings elsewhere. Time, and the awareness that the Autobots were near death, lacking in energon and numbers, would have made them careless.

A soldier may die of a thousand and more causes that have nothing at all to do with him, but carelessness has ever been his most deadly enemy. It is through carelessness that his weapon falls into disrepair and fails when he needs it. It is carelessness that causes him to sleep while on guard duty. Carelessness causes him to step through a doorway without checking for traps first, and ends his life. Through inattention, he may wander into even a poorly constructed ambush. Through carelessness, he may trust to memory what he should have checked, and find himself without as much ammunition as he thought in a firefight. Any soldier can die at any time, such is the nature of warfare. But a careless soldier will almost certainly die, and unfortunately take others with him when he goes.

This was a lesson Ratchet had learned so long ago that he had forgotten that he had not always known it. So it did not occur to him that young, low-ranked Decepticons might not have learned it at all, or might have forgotten it in the face of boredom and overconfidence. It was a mistake Optimus had made long ago, and it had cost him dearly. In his time, he had read hundreds of reports which bespoke of the carelessness of young Autobots, carelessness exploited by older, more experienced Decepticons. It was about time an Autobot got a turn to do the same to the Decepticons.

Optimus had more than mere understanding of Cybertronian nature to go on. The Earth-based Decepticons had already proven to him that they were carelessness. From the reports given to him almost the moment he arrived, it had been obvious. The Autobots knew where several Decepticon controlled energon caches were, yet the Decepticons had made no move to relocate or fortify these locations. They did not know where the Autobots were based, but they knew where they came from, and seemed only to concern themselves with heavily guarding the outermost caches, assuming the Autobots would target the energon closest to them rather than penetrating more deeply into Decepticon held territory. But they'd forgotten their own limited numbers, arrogantly presuming that no Autobot would realize that large tracts of land between each cache was unguarded. On Cybertron, they'd had numbers, and systems in place to warn them of encroaching Autobots. It had taken tremendous skill to get past watch-posts.

But there weren't any true lines of defense here. Each cache site had been purposely isolated from all others. It was a small matter to draw a course between cache sites, selecting one far from the front to assault. This Optimus did, choosing a site miles within the Decepticon "borders," that was guarded by a little under a dozen vehicons, and one Decepticon underling.

An impossible target for an energon-deficient Autobot fireteam, a pitiably easy one for a Prime.

The hardest part was taking them all out before they could radio a warning to their sister outposts. It was crucial the Decepticons not realize they'd been hit until Optimus had gone. He could not spend time and energon in fending off incoming waves of Decepticons, could not hold the site indefinitely. He needed to clear out the Decepticons, pick up all the energon he could carry, and hightail it back to the Autobot base. And he had to be sure he wasn't followed. The Autobots in their weakened state could not hope to withstand a siege; the Decepticons must not find where they were based.

As always, it was overconfidence that proved to be their undoing. Optimus had succeeded only in taking out three vehicons before he was spotted. The alarm was raised, but the Decepticons did not send out a distress signal. The underling running the mining operation at this site saw a single Autobot, and did not take into account that this Autobot was a Prime. Arrogantly, he chose to believe he could neutralize the threat without help aside from that of the vehicons assigned to him.

It was a fatal mistake.


	22. Chapter 21

Life returned to the Scout like the blaze of a fire.

The distance from Cybertron to Earth was as nothing next to the crossing point between Life and Death, though the difference between the two was no less shocking. For so long he had floated, somewhere between death and sleep, existing but not truly being, suspended between two realities and belonging to neither, detached without knowing or caring or remembering a time when he had done anything. There was not pain or fear in it, but there was likewise no joy or peace. There was just nothing, an endless void, a sense of emptiness and absence without truly recalling what had once been.

And then, after a time Bumblebee could not judge for in that plane of nonexistence time had no meaning, he was yanked jarringly back into being, pulled from darkness into light. It was as if he'd been drowning for his entire life and never known what breathing was until suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed him, hauling him to the surface, into the air for a sweet yet agonizing breath.

He was unaware of the terrified yowl that escaped him as he thrashed free of the life support system that had held him, didn't notice when he collapsed, twitching into the supporting arms of the Prime. He wasn't cognizant of the Medic running scans on him, or the fact that he clung to the arms holding him as if they were a life-raft, his unfocused eyes staring about wildly at nothing and everything while burring out words in basic speech that failed to form anything resembling a coherent sentence.

In a tumbling, frantic rush, his memories reasserted themselves, all at once, forgetting for a moment their context and order, overwhelming his processors and leaving him flailingly helpless, sickeningly disoriented, and harrowingly lost. And then the voice, and the three words he'd waited so long to hear.

"Well done, Scout."

It was the Prime, at whose orders he had left Cybertron, leaving all he knew and everything he loved to explore a world he did not understand and did not care for. The Prime, whose word he had heretofore treated as Law, even to drawing a weapon on his fellow Autobots. The Prime, in whom he had placed all faith, all trust, all loyalty of which his spark was capable.

The words seemed scant reward for all that he had done, but to Bumblebee it was as if they were all he had ever craved. The sound of this voice meant that his lonely exile was over, the long vigil as the primary protector of Earth was at an end. He knew, somewhere deep within, that his time on Earth was not over, but he also knew that from now on the Prime would make the hard choices. The Prime would keep the Autobots protected, and make sure their needs were provided for. It was not Bumblebee's burden anymore. The years-long mission was at last complete, and he could safely rest.

Shivering more from not fully believing relief than physical weakness, Bumblebee managed finally to make his eyes focus and look up at the face of Optimus Prime. The Prime's piercing gaze seemed to cut right through him, but it didn't hurt and he wasn't afraid.

 _{I couldn't...}_ he managed shakily, _{… couldn't keep them safe. Couldn't stop the Decepticons. Couldn't-}_

"I believe that you did everything you could to the best of your ability, Bumblebee," The Prime's strong voice rumbled reassuringly, "No one could ask more of you than that," he repeated himself then, something he was not prone to doing, "You did well."

Bumblebee wanted to argue, wanted to explain all the places he'd gone wrong, the mistakes he'd made, the times he'd lost his sense of balance and self-control. He wanted to report all that had been done to him and by him, all at once. He wanted to explain, in exhaustive detail, everything that other Autobots had accomplished and invented. He wanted to explain his every defeat at the hands of the Decepticons. But he did not protest. The deep respect he held for Primes, and specifically this last member of that noble and dying breed, silenced him.

Now, as always, if Optimus Prime said it was so, then Bumblebee must believe it. That was the choice he had made so long ago when he became one of the Autobots.

He had not known then what it would truly mean to serve under the last of the Primes, did not know then that Optimus would _be_ the last of the Primes. It was a choice he had made before he understood what choice he was making. But from the moment he made it, to the moment of his death, it was a choice he would abide by. He would not always do so well at it, would not always manage to listen and do as he was told, for a feral sort of independence ran hotly under his metallic shell, but in the end he would always follow wherever Optimus Prime led. That had been his choice.

It was a simple choice, though not all that had followed it -or those which were still to come- were so.

* * *

Diff and Rim were gone. They had survived the battle that had nearly taken out Bumblebee, but were killed in a later engagement. Most of the Decepticons Bumblebee had come to recognize since coming to Earth had also been killed. But more had arrived on both sides, some of whom Bumblebee remembered from before, others being strangers to him.

The extensive and repeated killing of the first arrivals to Earth made for a very different playing field from the one Bumblebee had been on. Earth was now the last great source of energon – energon which neither side knew the location of because there had been no records made and those who had hidden it were dead. The planet was also crawling with humans now, to such an extent that Cybertronians -Autobots in particular- had taken on vehicle modes that matched man-made vehicles so that they could travel unnoticed. It was a different world from the one Bumblebee had learned.

Ratchet's advice was for Bumblebee to rest, to take his time. He was still recovering from having been effectively in stasis for so long. Bumblebee appreciated the concern, but he had work to do. He had an internal map that desperately needed updating, and friends he needed to mourn. For him, that would mean some long driving hours, preferably alone, at least for a little while. Ratchet protested, but Bumblebee turned the matter over to Optimus. The Prime understood, and he did not forbid Bumblebee's excursion, only stipulating that he must check in often.

He knew that, in addition to his own needs, Bumblebee had seen the needs of the few Autobots left. Bringing Bumblebee back had required practically flooding his systems with energon, but his fellow Autobots were on limited rations. He needed to use the energy he had to spare while he had it, and he chose to do what he did best: Scout the lay of the land.

Bumblebee wasn't just going for an aimless drive. He was starting the process of building a new map. At the same time, he would be checking any old potential energon cache sites he knew of. He'd report back if he found any energon, but his outdated map would make it nearly impossible to tell anyone else about the locations he knew of, he would have to go there himself. Maybe those sites were already empty. Maybe they'd never been filled. Bumblebee was going to find out. He was the only one who could.

So much had changed, yet this one constant remained: whoever controlled the energon controlled the world. As things stood now, nobody was actually winning. So little energon was in play that any and all fighting that went on was explicitly over it. It was a strange situation, where Decepticons and Autobots passing each other would actually pay no attention to one another unless they were carrying energon. Neither side knew where the majority of the caches were, so all were hunting, and there was no percentage in one following the other because the other knew no more than the one.

Over the next few years, things would grow steadily more quiet, until at some point neither side would be entirely sure that the other still existed. The search for energon would become all-consuming. Whenever a cache was found, it had to be carefully rationed to (hopefully) last until the next time one could be found. Any cache was worth fighting over. Small skirmishes like that slowly ate away at the reduced ranks of the Autobots (and the Decepticons as well). Even minor wounds could be fatal. On such restricted rations of energon, just a few drops lost could kill. Any leak was a potentially deadly wound as a result. Many Autobots walked away from a fight, only to later collapse because of what would once have been a minor injury.

Ratchet designed steadily stronger armor for the Autobots who remained. It looked pretty much the same, but it was harder to get through to the soft interior. He also worked on lighter armor. The lighter the armor, the less energy it took to move. The less energy spent, the less energon used.

As a consequence of circumstance, the Autobots who survived long-term were often smaller, lighter and more agile. They didn't pack as much of a punch, and maybe couldn't take as much of one either, but they were damned hard to hit in the first place. Their small size and light build meant it took fewer resources to build better armor for them, and that they on average used less energon when they fought. Only a scant few large Autobots survived, and them mostly because their time in the field was restricted. Even Optimus Prime, with all of his power, often remained at base, leaving exploration to Autobots who expended less energon when they moved.

With the invention of the Ground Bridge, nearly all Autobots of significant size stayed at base, only to be deployed in the event of battle. It wasn't laziness, it was a matter of survival, not just as individuals, but for the Autobots as a whole. Big, heavy Warriors were needed for battle, but when it came to roaming the lands in search of lost energon they were thoroughly inefficient.

A long silence descended over the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. It was not a cease fire, only a tense waiting. Both sides knew there would come a time when the war would reawaken in all of its fury, and each did what they could to prepare for it. But until they met again with at least one side in good enough condition for battle, there was nothing but a grim and lonely road ahead, tensely wondering what the other side was doing. Hoping not to find out because that would breathe new life into the war, but also knowing that the not knowing was dangerous.

There was a brief re-ignition of the flames of war, resulting in the first human-Autobot alliance. To the humans, it had been a major catastrophe, one that involved governmental coverups and a permanently assigned agent to liaison with the Autobots. To the Autobots, it was a handful of skirmishes and one larger, more decisive battle, barely a blip in the annals of history.

Humans, short-lived as they were, could not conceive of a war like that between the Autobots and Decepticons, with its long years of silence and inactivity, followed by brief, densely packed periods of violence.

It was such a long silence that the original agent assigned to work with the Autobots retired. A new man took his place, a long-term government serviceman. He was good at what he did, but he had never seen the Autobots in action, never seen a Decepticon at all. Bumblebee found him to be mouthy and irritating, like a young Warrior who'd just gotten his stripes.

Optimus was not concerned. It mattered to him only that the agent had humanity's best interests at heart. Time and experience would take care of the rest, he assured Autobots nervous about the disposition of this new human, or annoyed by his arrogance.

For the most part however, the human contact was Optimus Prime's problem.

Bumblebee spent the majority of his time in the field. He spent days or even weeks at a time away from the base, his only contact being the radio chatter, which he usually kept out of. The few Autobots left were all senior to him for one thing, and his damaged voice didn't come over the primitive human tech spliced into the systems very well for another. So he mostly listened. Most of the airtime was filled by a Warrior named Cliffjumper, whom Bumblebee knew well from the old days. He was a never-ending supply of stories, mostly directed at his partner, Arcee, who seemed to tolerate them only grudgingly. When she and Bumblebee got together, sometimes they would joke about what it would be like if Cliff would just shut up for one day. She and Bumblebee both understood companionable silence; Cliff... not so much.

But the day Cliffjumper's voice was finally silence forever was one of grief and profound loss, most particularly to Arcee. Much as he annoyed her, she'd loved Cliff, as much as any of her partners. Though she and Bumblebee had become close as family over their years on Earth, he could do nothing to comfort her or ease her pain. She wouldn't let him, and he didn't really know how anyway.

Despite all of his own losses, Bumblebee had never really had a partner, and had spent most of his time working alone. He'd grown fond of Cliff, of course. Cliff was the sort you either grew fond of or tried to strangle. But it wasn't the same between him and Cliffjumper as it had been between Cliff and Arcee.

Sometimes Bumblebee thought that if he had been the one who'd died, Cliff would have known how to comfort Arcee. Cliff had always had this light, this energy, this life about him. And then, after years of hearing his voice over the radio, he was just gone. Like that, in a flash. So many had gone before him, but it never got any easier. Always Bumblebee was left wishing he could've somehow done more.

If only he'd been faster. If only he hadn't listened when Cliff said he didn't need backup. If only... but none of that would bring Cliff back. It wouldn't restore Diff and Rim. It wouldn't save Axle, Throttle or Jax. There was nothing for it but to move forward, to keep going, to keep fighting for what the fallen had died for. The fate of the Autobots, and the Earth, lay in the hands of those who remained.

Cybertron was dead. But Earth still breathed. Earth could still be saved. In the name of those who had died, it was the duty of Bumblebee -and of every Autobot still standing- to try. Earth had once been the farthest planet from home. But now it was the only home they had left. And Bumblebee would keep fighting for the planet he had learned to love, and the future he still believed in.


	23. Epilogue

"But that's not really an ending," Raf protested, "It feels like the story keeps going, and there's got to be a lot of stuff you skipped, right?"

Of course there were details Bumblebee had skimmed over, and a thousand little incidents and minor battles he had not even mentioned. Some of them he had already told Raf, without this surrounding context. Even so, it hadn't been a short story, but Raf had listened with politely rapt attention and had not interrupted once except to ask a clarifying question or two.

 _{Of course it does,}_ Bumblebee replied with a certain level of amusement, _{I'm not dead yet. Even if I were, the war is far from over.}_

Asphalt hissed beneath the Scout's churning tires, the red desert slid by on either side, its elaborate rock formations rising out of the hazy distance like slumbering leviathans. The day had remained sunny and warm the whole time, but during certain parts of the story it had seemed to Raf that it had grown dark, cold and even stormy. Though Raf had a vivid imagination, now Bumblebee had stopped talking, it was hard to picture the dark days and violence that had come over the Earth so many times. With the sun out, the desert placid and still in the waning afternoon, it was hard to think that it had ever not been so. They had seen no end to the desert during the entire drive, and it was difficult to think Bumblebee had once roamed the continent from end to end, or that he might have started on a different continent entirely, coming here via the Ground Bridge after years somewhere else far away.

"I guess that makes sense," Raf decided after thinking it over for a time.

It occurred to him, now, that even if he did have a better grasp of the enormity of the universe than many people seemed to, that grip was still pitiably weak. Bumblebee had seen, done and experienced more things already than Raf would in his entire life, and by Cybertronian standards Bee was quite young. Raf was wise enough to realize that he could not comprehend on a more than intellectual level the vast sweep of time Bumblebee had just talked about. Decades, centuries, even millennia, were barely a blink or so in the life cycle of a Cybertronian.

With this context, it was easier to imagine how Megatron could once have been good, lost his way by slow, almost unnoticed degrees, until one day it became obvious that he was the most evil of all the Decepticons. Perhaps he had always been slightly twisted, but it had revealed itself only a little at a time, perhaps starting as a single morally ambiguous action that raised no alarms with anyone, then nothing for months or even years, then another little slip and another. A slow fade into darkness.

How much more wicked and powerful would the worst humans have become given a little (or a lot) more time? The brief span of human life might be more a blessing than anyone had realized. Certainly the Autobots seemed to carry the weight of the ages as a heaviness of spirit, though their bodies remained strong for eons. And there seemed no depth of self-interest that was beyond the reach of the Decepticons, self-interest that -sooner or later- ever manifested itself in unfathomable cruelty. All that time gave them the ability to amass great power, and huge armies on a scale humans would find difficult to imagine. Was this then the price paid by civilized races who lived such long lives?

Humankind was ever rushing forward in its search for the answer to death, seeking to live longer by any and all means. It seemed a good and noble pursuit, to try and live longer, healthier lives. But perhaps there was a cost to this quest for immortality that no one who pursued it had ever considered. Perhaps those who died young were the lucky ones, for they were spared witnessing or even learning of many of the more horrible human atrocities. They were spared having to fight, year after hopeless year, against a dark force seemingly greater than themselves. They were spared the feebleness and indignities which come inevitably to humans who succeed at living to a ripe old age.

Before he had considered any of this very deeply, instinct drew him back. There are some things which young minds especially are best off not dwelling on for long periods. There was nothing to be gained from looking into the black well of human folly, wherein dwelled the manifestation of all the race's arrogance, selfishness and greed. There was nothing at the bottom of that but fear, shame and despair. Raf knew by instinct what some insist on finding out by exploring all the way down that well, inspecting every aspect of evil to be found in any human heart, until they should conclude -as Megatron had- that humanity ought to be purged to make way for something "better."

It seemed as if the Autobots had not looked too closely at this well, but Raf knew they had. Somehow, they had seen the sins of humanity, some of them firsthand, and yet they saw something worth saving. Something with potential. Something that they valued, and wanted to protect at any cost to themselves. Though it was the claim of Optimus that he merely wanted to prevent humans from being punished for the mistakes of the Autobots, Raf suspected there was something more to it. Something that was not to be interfered with by even the wisest among them.

He had noticed, of course, that Bumblebee had more than once thrown himself into a potentially deadly situation in order to protect him. Bumblebee had killed to protect him, and was willing to die as well. Raf had always known this, and it had ever been a stunning thing to contemplate, that one so powerful and with so much to live and fight for should notice him, and be willing to give up his life for Raf alone. But he saw it on another level today, realizing how very, very long Bumblebee's life was and how much he had accomplished already, and how much the Autobots needed him. Yet Bumblebee would throw that all away just to save Raf; a single, tiny, insignificant human, whose short life was as nothing in comparison with the span of years that were granted the average Cybertronian. Bumblebee valued Raf's puny life so much that he was willing to give up eons of existence, to abandon the worthy cause of the Autobots itself, just so that Raf might be spared death for the blink of an eye that was the span of human life viewed on a cosmic level. It was as awesome a realization as it was humbling.

Lost in these thoughts, Raf hadn't noticed for awhile that they were driving uphill, nor did he notice when they turned off the road and drove across sandy rock. He noticed only when Bumblebee stopped. He looked up from his daze, and realized they were on a high ledge.

Raf got out of his seat and scrambled up to look through the windshield from between the two front seats. Above, the sky stretched, an endless lake of unblemished blue. Below, the fiery tones of the endless desert, marked here and there by low scrub and shadow left in the wake of rock formations.

He did not ask where they were. Raf was sure he knew. When he saw a distant black speck that slowly circled nearer and nearer, he was more certain still. When the raven got close, it seemed to hang back cautiously for a moment, then suddenly dropped from the air and landed on Bumblebee's hood. Raf saw its glistening black feathers clearly through the windshield, but it seemed the bird not see him as it turned to survey its territory from this high vantage point, and to issue a raucous call that seemed to be a challenge to the sun itself.

"Welcome to Earth, Bumblebee," Raf breathed quietly, "Welcome _home_."

* * *

 _ **A/N: I hope you enjoyed this story, I really appreciate you taking the time to read it, so thank you and goodnight everybody.  
**_


End file.
